CARROLL"] (1832-1898), English
mathematician and author, son of the Rev. Charles Dodgson, vicar of
Daresbury, Cheshire, was born in that village on the 27th of January
1832. The literary life of "Lewis Carroll" became familiar to a wide
circle of readers, but the private life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was
retired and practically uneventful. After four years' schooling at
Rugby, Dodgson matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in May 1850; and
from 1852 till 1870 held a studentship there. He took a first class in
the final mathematical school in 1854, and the following year was
appointed mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, a post he continued to
fill till 1881. In 1861 he was ordained deacon, but he never took
priest's orders, possibly because of a stammer which prevented reading
aloud. His earliest publications, beginning with _A Syllabus of Plane
Algebraical Geometry_ (1860) and _The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry_
(1861), were exclusively mathematical; but late in the year 1865 he
published, under the pseudonym of "Lewis Carroll," _Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland_, a work that was the outcome of his keen sympathy with
the imagination of children and their sense of fun. Its success was
immediate, and the name of "Lewis Carroll" has ever since been a
household word. A dramatic version of the "Alice" books by Mr Savile
Clarke was produced at Christmas, 1886, and has since enjoyed many
revivals. Mr Dodgson was always very fond of children, and it was an
open secret that the original of "Alice" was a daughter of Dean Liddell.
_Alice_ was followed (in the "Lewis Carroll" series) by
_Phantasmagoria_, in 1869; _Through the Looking-Glass_, in 1871; _The
Hunting of the Snark_ (1876); _Rhyme and Reason_ (1883); _A Tangled
Tale_ (1885); and _Sylvie and Bruno_ (in two parts, 1889 and 1893). He
wrote skits on Oxford subjects from time to time. _The Dynamics of a
Particle_ was written on the occasion of the contest between Gladstone
and Mr Gathorne Hardy (afterwards earl of Cranbrook); and _The New
Belfry_ in ridicule of the erection put up at Christ Church for the
bells that were removed from the Cathedral tower. While "Lewis Carroll"
was delighting children of all ages, C. L. Dodgson periodically
published mathematical works--_An Elementary Treatise on Determinants_
(1867); _Euclid, Book V., proved Algebraically_ (1874); _Euclid and his
Modern Rivals_ (1879), the work on which his reputation as a
mathematician largely rests;