Cоntents intrоductiоn chapter I. The life and work of Lewis Carroll

Mathematical logic

His work in the field of mathematical logic attracted renewed interest in the late 20th century. Martin Gardner's book on logic machines and diagrams and William Warren Bartley's posthumous publication of the second part of Dodgson's symbolic logic book have sparked a reevaluation of Dodgson's contributions to symbolic logic.  It is recognized that in his Symbolic Logic Part II, Dodgson introduced the Method of Trees, the earliest modern use of a truth tree.

Algebra

Robbins' and Rumsey's investigation of Dodgson condensation, a method of evaluating determinants, led them to the alternating sign matrix conjecture, now a theorem.

Recreational mathematics

The discovery in the 1990s of additional ciphers that Dodgson had constructed, in addition to his "Memoria Technica", showed that he had employed sophisticated mathematical ideas in their creation.
Dodgson wrote and received as many as 98,721 letters, according to a special letter register which he devised. He documented his advice about how to write more satisfying letters in a missive entitled "Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing".
Lewis Carroll in later life
Dodgson's existence remained little changed over the last twenty years of his life, despite his growing wealth and fame. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881 and remained in residence there until his death. Public appearances included attending the West End musical Alice in Wonderland (the first major live production of his Alice books) at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 30 December 1886. The two volumes of his last novel, Sylvie and Bruno, were published in 1889 and 1893, but the intricacy of this work was apparently not appreciated by contemporary readers; it achieved nothing like the success of the Alice books, with disappointing reviews and sales of only 13,000 copies.
1.2.The Works and Career of Lewis Carroll
The only known occasion on which he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in 1867 as an ecclesiastic, together with the Reverend Henry Liddon. He recounts the travel in his "Russian Journal", which was first commercially published in 1935. On his way to Russia and back, he also saw different cities in Belgium, Germany, partitioned Poland, and France.
The grave of Lewis Carroll at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford
Dodgson died of pneumonia following influenza on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts", in Guildford in the county of Surrey, just four days before the death of Henry Liddell. He was two weeks away from turning 66 years old. His funeral was held at the nearby St Mary's Church. His body was buried at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford.
He is commemorated at All Saints' Church, Daresbury, in its stained glass windows depicting characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Dodgson was the eldest son and third child in a family of seven girls and four boys born to Frances Jane Lutwidge, the wife of the Rev. Charles Dodgson. He was born in the old parsonage at Daresbury. His father was perpetual curate there from 1827 until 1843, when he became rector of Croft in Yorkshire a post he held for the rest of his life (though later he became also archdeacon of Richmond and a canon of Ripon cathedral).
The Dodgson children, living as they did in an isolated country village, had few friends outside the family but, like many other families in similar circumstances, found little difficulty in entertaining themselves. Charles from the first showed a great aptitude for inventing games to amuse them. With the move to Croft when he was 12 came the beginning of the “Rectory Magazines,” manuscript compilations to which all the family were supposed to contribute. In fact, Charles wrote nearly all of those that survive, beginning with Useful and Instructive Poetry (1845; published 1954) and following with The Rectory Magazine (c. 1850, mostly unpublished), The Rectory Umbrella (1850–53), and Mischmasch (1853–62; published with The Rectory Umbrella in 1932).
Meanwhile, young Dodgson attended Richmond School, Yorkshire (1844–45), and then proceeded to Rugby School (1846–50). He disliked his four years at public school, principally because of his innate shyness, although he was also subjected to a certain amount of bullying; he also endured several illnesses, one of which left him deaf in one ear. After Rugby he spent a further year being tutored by his father, during which time he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford (May 23, 1850). He went into residence as an undergraduate there on January 24, 1851.
The view of Dodgson as having no adult life and being preoccupied with children persisted among his biographers, including Florence Becker Lennon (The White Knight, 1952). The debate tended to veer between those who believed Dodgson to have been asexually obsessed with children and those who believed this obsession to have been pedophilic.
The issue was rekindled in 1995 with the authoritative Lewis Carroll, a Biography by Morton Cohen. Cohen writes:
"We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay behind Charles's preference for drawing and photographing children in the nude. He contended the preference was entirely aesthetic. But given his emotional attachment to children as well as his aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself. Certainly he always sought to have another adult present when nude prepubescents modelled for him."
Cohen further notes that the children's mothers were encouraged to be present, and asks if these precautions were the result of Dodgson "insuring himself against slip ups." (p 228-229) Cohen concedes that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism," but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" (p 229).
The only recorded instance of trouble associated with the nudes of children was Dodgson's experience with the Mayhew family. In 1879, Dodgson wrote what have been called by Cohen "several curious letters ... to the family of Andrew Mayhew, an Oxford colleague ... He asked permission to take nude photographs of the three Mayhew daughters, ages 6, 11, and 13, with no other adults present." The Mayhew parents, who had previously allowed Dodgson to photograph their children, refused, and Cohen notes this same period saw a "sudden break in the friendship" between Dodgson and the Mayhew family (p. 170). Leach suggests that the problem lay with his desire to study the older daughters in frontal positions and not with the younger children.
Karoline Leach's work and the 'Carroll Myth'
A new analysis of Dodgson's sexual proclivities (and indeed the evolution of the entire process of his biography) appears in Karoline Leach's 1999 book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild. She claims that the image of Dodgson's alleged pedophilia was built out of a failure to understand Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea that Dodgson had no interest in adult women which evolved out of the minds of various biographers. She termed this simplified, often frankly fictional image 'the Carroll Myth'.
According to Leach, who cites much prima facie evidence, Dodgson's real life was very different from the accepted biographical image. He was in fact keenly interested in adult women and apparently enjoyed several relationships with women, married and single. Some of these were his child friends with whom he retained good relations into adulthood (in complete refutation of the mythic idea that he 'lost interest' in any girl over the age of 14), but others, like Catherine Lloyd, Constance Burch, Edith Shute, Gertrude Thomson (to name but a few, were women he met as adults and with whom he shared very close and meaningful friendships. Suggestions of pedophilia only evolved many years after his death, when his well meaning family had suppressed all evidence of these adult friendships in order to try to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man only interested in little girls. This serves to repudiate some of the classical evidence for the claims of pedophilia.

Dodgson's problems with societal disapproval, Leach says, stemmed not from his usage of nude child models but his attempts to get slightly older models to pose in 'bathing dress' and other immodest clothing. These studies of scantily dressed older models have all disappeared, leaving commentators only the photos of young girls to comment on. In a review of the title in Victorian Studies (Vol.43, No.4) reviewer Donald Rackin wrote, "As a piece of biographical scholarship, Karoline Leach's In the Shadow of the Dreamchild is difficult to take seriously". However, for all the emotional intensity of his attack, he visibly failed to detail any actual errors in her work. Nor have any errors been pointed out so far by any other authorities, and many now regard her work as an important step towards a better understanding of Carroll. Her work has been paralleled by that of Hugues Lebailly whose studies of Dodgson's artistic and social interests also support the idea that the image of his 'obsession' with little girls was largely simplistic or mythic in origin.
Jack the Ripper theories Many wild theories have been woven around the life of Lewis Carroll. Perhaps the most extreme emerged in 1996 when author Richard Wallace published a book titled Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend accusing Lewis Carroll and his colleague Thomas Vere Bayne of being Jack the Ripper. It was largely based upon anagrams Wallace constructed from Carroll's writing. Carroll and Bayne have strong alibis for most of the nights of the Ripper murders, and Wallace's theory has not found support from other scholars.
Carroll did show some interest in the Jack the Ripper case, but this is hardly unusual, given the profound publicity surrounding the crimes. A passage in his diary dated August 26, 1891, reports that he spoke that day with an acquaintance of his about his "very ingenious theory about 'Jack the Ripper'". No other information about this theory has been found.
Inventions
Lewis Carroll seems to have thought a lot about how to solve some common technical problems of the day. The fact that he was able to understand and use new technologies is amply demonstrated by his use of the camera, which was not as user-friendly as it is today.
One such invention, as cited in his journal on September 24, 1891 and as published in, was a system of writing called Nyctography and a tool called the Nyctograph. He invented this because he would be unable to sleep at night and would want to write down his ideas to clear his head. But, wanting to go quickly back to bed, he did not want to go through all the mechanical steps involved in lighting a lamp. He designed a card with square holes in a regular grid. One would always make a dot in the upper left corner and then make other dots and/or strokes. These symbols were designed to look somewhat like the letters or numbers they represented. This did not seem to be used for any longer writings, since no writings with these symbols survive. But it is probable that Lewis Carroll himself would use this to make short notes to jog his memory, and then he would probably write the idea out in his journal. He also invented the pencil and paper game Word Ladder.
Migraine and Epilepsy In his diary for 1880, Dodgson recorded experiencing his first episode of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of 'moving fortifications' that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the syndrome. Unfortunately there is no clear evidence to show whether this was his first experience of migraine per se, or if he may have previously suffered the far more common form of migraine without aura, although the latter seems most likely, given the fact that migraine most commonly develops in the teens or early adulthood. Another form of migraine aura, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, has been named after Dodgson's little heroine, because its manifestation can resemble the sudden size changes in the book. Also known as micropsia and macropsia, it is a brain condition affecting the way objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object, like a basketball, and perceive it as if it were the size of a golf ball. Some authors have suggested that Dodgson may have suffered from this type of aura, and used it as an inspiration in his work, but there is no evidence that he did. Dodgson also suffered two attacks in which he lost consciousness. He was diagnosed by three different doctors; a Dr. Morshead, Dr. Brooks, and Dr. Stedman, believed the attack and a consequent attack to be an "epileptiform" seizure (initially thought to be fainting, but Brooks changed his mind). Some have concluded from this he was a lifetime sufferer of this condition, but there is no evidence of this in his diaries beyond the diagnosis of the two attacks already mentioned. Some authors, in particular Sadi Ranson, have suggested Carroll may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy in which consciousness is not always completely lost, but altered, and in which the symptoms mimic many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had at least one incidence in which he suffered full loss of consciousness and awoke with a bloody nose, which he recorded in his diary and noted that the episode left him not feeling himself for "quite sometime afterward". This attack was diagnosed as possibly "epileptiform" and Carroll himself later wrote of his "seizures" in the same diary. Most of the standard diagnostic tests of today were not available in the nineteenth century. Recently, Dr Yvonne Hart, consultant neurologist at the Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, considered Dodgson's symptoms. Her conclusion, quoted in Jenny Woolf's The Mystery of Lewis Carroll, is that Dodgson very likely had migraine, and may have had epilepsy, but she emphasises that she would have considerable doubt about making a diagnosis of epilepsy without further information. Suggestions of Paedophilia Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (Dodgson's nephew and biographer) wrote: And now as to the secondary causes which attracted him to children. First, I think children appealed to him because he was preeminently a teacher, and he saw in their unspoiled minds the best material for him to work upon. In later years one of his favourite recreations was to lecture at schools on logic; he used to give personal attention to each of his pupils, and one can well imagine with what eager anticipation the children would have looked forward to the visits of a schoolmaster who knew how to make even the dullest subjects interesting and amusing. Despite comments like this, Dodgson's friendships with young girls and psychological readings of his work especially his photographs of nude or semi nude girls have all led to speculation that he was a paedophile. This possibility has underpinned numerous modern interpretations of his life and work, particularly Dennis Potter's play Alice and his screenplay for the motion picture, Dreamchild, and even more importantly Robert Wilson's Alice, and a number of recent biographies, including Michael Bakewell's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1996), Donald Thomas's Lewis Carroll: A Portrait with Background (1995), and Morton N. Cohen's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1995). All of these works more or less unequivocally assume that Dodgson was a paedophile, albeit a repressed and celibate one. Cohen claims Dodgson's "sexual energies sought unconventional outlets", and further writes: We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay behind Charles's preference for drawing and photographing children in the nude. He contended the preference was entirely aesthetic. But given his emotional attachment to children as well as his aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself. Cohen notes that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism", but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface". Cohen and other biographers argue that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause of the unexplained "break" with the family in June 1863. But there has never been significant evidence to support the idea, and the 1996 discovery of the "cut pages in diary document" (see above) seems to make it highly probable that the 1863 "break" had nothing to do with Alice, but was perhaps connected with rumours involving her older sister Lorina (born 11 May 1849, so she would have been 14 at the time), her governess, or her mother who was also nicknamed "Ina". Some writers, e.g., Derek Hudson and Roger Lancelyn Green, stop short of identifying Dodgson as a paedophile, but concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world. The basis for Dodgson's perceived 'obsession' with female children has been challenged in the last ten years by several writers and scholars (see the 'Carroll Myth' above).)
It is very obvious in the story that it was written for the three Liddell girls, of whom Alice was the closest to Dodgson. In the introductory poem to the tale, there are clear indications to the three, there named Prima, Secunda and Tertia Latin for first, second and third respectively in feminized forms. The part considering rowing on happy summer days was derived directly from reality. It is said that he used to row out on picnics with the Liddell girls and tell them stories. On one of these excursions it started raining heavily and they all became soaked. This, it is said, was the inspiration to the second chapter of the book, The Pool of Tears. The ever occurring number of three points out Dodgson always having in mind the three girls he tells the story to. It could, of course, having in mind the fact that he was a cleric, be the Christian Trinity or something completely different.
One other example of maturing is Alice getting used to the new sizes she grows. She talks to her feet and learns some of the new ways her body works in. Her feelings are very shaken from her adventures and she cries quite often when it’s impossible to obey the rules of the Wonderland or is it adulthood? “Everything is so out of the way down here”, as Alice often repeats to herself. Alice doesn’t like the animals in Wonderland who treat her as a child, but sometimes she gets daunted by the responsibility she has to take. The quote “Everyone in Wonderland is mad, otherwise they wouldn’t be down here” told by the Cheshire Cat can be given an existential meaning. Is it that everyone alive is mad being alive, or everyone dreaming him- or herself away is mad due to the escape from reality? Time is a very central theme in the story. The Hatter’s watch shows days because “it’s always six o’ clock and tea-time”. Time matters in growing up, I guess, but further interpretations are left unsaid. The poem in chapter 12 hints at forbidden love, and it is entirely possible that it is about his platonic love for children, or Mrs. Liddell, for that matter. Considering the fact, that the first manuscript was called Alice’s Adventures Underground, and that some at least the Swedish translation of the title is a bit ambiguous, it becomes more apparent, that the world Alice enters isn’t just any childrens’ playground, but a somewhat frightening and dangerous place for maturing. The “underground” part of the old title undeniably suggests drawing parallells to the direction of Dante or the Holy Bible.4
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4 . Douglas Fairhurst, Robert (20 March 2015). "Alice in Wonderland: the never ending adventures". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 1 December 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
Continuing in this direction, the wonderful garden, into which Alice wants to get, can be a symbol of the Garden of Eden. It can be assumed that Dodgson, being a cleric and a strictly religious man, had read and was very familiar with the biblical myths aswell as Milton’s Paradise Lost. It becomes more interesting when Alice finally gets into the garden and finds a pack of cards ruling it, with a very evil queen
at its head. It appears to be a way of saying that even The Garden of Eden can be in chaos, or that the garden isn’t really what it appears to be. Or, having in mind his Victorian irony in the tale, a way of saying that our lives on Earth are, in fact, the closest we can get to a paradise, and that it is ruled my a malignous queen with little respect for human lives. These theories are, of course, merely speculations and it would be quite rude to suggest even madder parallells, which isn’t at all difficult with a childrens’ story of this kind.
Some people have gone very far in their claims that Lewis Carroll wrote the stories while influenced by opium. They say the fifth chapter with the smoking Blue Caterpillar is about drugs. These claims have no real evidence or facts to point at, and it seems that they’re just mad rumours made up by people who want to see more than there is in a fairy tale. It is fairly obvious that the visions of the stories derive from the genious of a man, and not from drug influence. If the worlds in the books are somewhat surreal it surely comes from Dodgson having a vivid imagination and an ability to make nonsense worlds alive. He definitely had his share of problems, but drugs don’t seem to have been one of them. At a closer look, there seems to be a whole lot of anguish in the story. This becomes even more apparent in the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, and its introductory poem, where the following can be found: “I have not seen thy sunny face, Nor heard thy silver laughter; No thought of me shall find a place In thy young life’s hereafter”. The part surely expresses Dodgson’s feelings for missing the young girl Alice used to be before growing up.
Perhaps the first story is more like a description of a young friend growing up and disappearing out of one’s life by becoming an adult, and as such, out of Dodgson’s reach. Dodgson lost contact with Alice Liddell in 1868, a few years before the publishing of the sequel. It seems that the first book is a tribute to a friend who, in time, will be lost to Dodgson, and that the sequel is, considering its tone, an epitaph. This is clearly seen in the last lines (actually, it’s just one long sentence) of the first story when Alice’s sister thinks of Alice:
“Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after time, be herself a grown woman ; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long-ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child life, and the happy summer days.”
It appears to be Dodgson’s own thoughts about the girl growing up expressed through one of Alice’s sisters. Another quote that expresses Dodgson’s feelings for getting old found in the same introduction mentioned above: “We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.” This melancholy tone of Dodgson’s can be found in various parts of the sequel, which expresses his grief of losing the close friend he once had before she grew up and vanished. The very last poem in the sequel begins its lines with letters that make up “Alice Pleasance Liddell” her complete name.