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LEWIS CARROLL
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of
Charles L. Dodgson, author of the
children's classics "Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-
Glass."
Born on January 27, 1832 in Daresbury,
Cheshire, England, Charles Dodgson
wrote and created games as a child. At
age 20 he received a studentship at
Christ Church and was appointed a lecturer in mathematics. Dodgson was
shy but enjoyed creating stories for children. His books including "Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland" were published under the pen name Lewis
Carroll. Dodgson died in 1898.

EARLY LIFE
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, best known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll,
was born in the village of Daresbury, England, on January 27, 1832. The
eldest boy in a family of 11 children, Carroll was rather adept at
entertaining himself and his siblings. His father, a clergyman, raised them
in the rectory. As a boy, Carroll excelled in mathematics and won many
academic prizes. At age 20, he was awarded a studentship (called a
scholarship in other colleges) to Christ College. Apart from serving as a
lecturer in mathematics, he was an avid photographer and wrote essays,
www. fairytails.biz

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political pamphlets and poetry. "The Hunting of the Snark" displays his
wonderful ability in the genre of literary nonsense.

ALICE AND LITERARY SUCCESS
Carroll suffered from a bad
stammer, but he found
himself vocally fluent when
speaking with children. The
relationships he had with
young people in his adult
years are of great interest, as
they undoubtedly inspired his
best-known writings and have
been a point of disturbed
speculation over the years.
Carroll loved to entertain children, and it was Alice, the daughter of Henry
George Liddell, who can be credited with his pinnacle inspiration. Alice
Liddell remembers spending many hours with Carroll, sitting on his couch
while he told fantastic tales of dream worlds. During an afternoon picnic
with Alice and her two sisters, Carroll told the first iteration of what would
later become Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. When Alice arrived
home, she exclaimed that he must write the story down for her.
He fulfilled the small girl's request, and through a series of coincidences,
the story fell into the hands of the novelist Henry Kingsley, who urged
Carroll to publish it. The book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was
released in 1865. It gained steady popularity, and as a result, Carroll
asklewiscarroll.tumblr.com

http://www.lewiscarroll.org/carroll/art/


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wrote the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found
There (1871). By the time of his death, Alice had become the most
popular children's book in England, and by 1932 it was one of the most
popular in the world.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND LEGACY
Besides writing, Carroll
created a number of fine
photographs. His notable
portraits include those of the
actress Ellen Terry and the
poet Alfred Tennyson. He
also photographed children
in every possible costume
and situation, eventually
making nude studies of
them. Despite conjecture,
little real evidence of child abuse can be brought against him. Shortly
before his 66th birthday, Lewis Carroll caught a severe case of influenza,
which led to pneumonia. He died on January 14, 1898, leaving an
enigma behind him.

http://www.biography.com/people/lewis-carroll-9239598


http://www.lewiscarroll.org/carroll/art/
A Self-Portrait

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SIR JOHN TENNIEL

Sir John Tenniel (28 February, 1820
25 February, 1914) was an English
illustrator.
He drew many topical cartoons and
caricatures for Punch in the late 19th
century, but is best remembered today
for his illustrations in Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking-Glass.
In 1865 he illustrated the first edition of Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland. The first print run of 2,000 was shelved because Tenniel
objected to the print quality; a new edition, released in December of the
same year but carrying an 1866 date, was quickly printed and became an
instant best-seller, securing Tenniel's lasting fame in the process. His
illustrations for both books have taken their place among the most famous
literary illustrations ever made. They were used as a reference for the
costumes in Disney's Alice in Wonderland, and Tim Burton's Alice in
Wonderland.
Tenniel's illustrations for the 'Alice' books were engraved onto blocks of
wood, to be printed in the woodcut process. The original wood blocks are
now in the collection of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. They are not
usually on public display, but were exhibited in 2003.
http://aliceinwonderland.wikia.com/wiki/Sir_John_Tenniel
Self-portrait of John Tenniel, en.wikipedia.org

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The following John Tenniels illustrations of Lewis Carrolls Alice in
Wonderland were taken from the Victorian Web Literature, history &
culture in the age of Victoria.


Im late, Im late (1865)
Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel


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Alice, the Duchess, and the Baby (1865)
Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel


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The Mad Hatter (1865)
Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel


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The Gryphon and Mock-Turtle (1865)
Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel


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Off with her head! (1865)
Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel


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The King and Queen (1865)
Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel


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http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/tenniel/alice/12.3.html
Youre nothing but a pack of cards! (1865)
Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel


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THE 100 BEST NOVELS: NO 18 ALICE'S
ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND BY LEWIS CARROLL
(1865)
Lewis Carroll's brilliant nonsense tale is one of the most influential and best loved in
the English canon

by Robert McCrum, in The Observer, Sunday 19 January 2014
On 4 July 1862, a shy
young Oxford mathematics don
with a taste for puzzles and
whimsy named Charles
Dodgson rowed the three
daughters of Henry Liddell,
dean of Christ Church, five
miles up the Thames to
Godstow. On the way, to
entertain his passengers, who included a 10-year-old named Alice, with
whom he was strangely infatuated, Dodgson began to improvise the
"Adventures Under Ground" of a bored young girl, also named Alice.
Wordplay, logical conundrums, parody and riddles: Dodgson surpassed
himself, and the girls were enchanted by the nonsense dreamworld he
conjured up. The weather for this trip was reportedly "overcast", but those
on board would remember it as "a golden afternoon".
This well-known story marks the beginning of perhaps the greatest,
possibly most influential, and certainly the most world-famous Victorian
English fiction, a book that hovers between a nonsense tale and an
elaborate in-joke. Just three years later, extended, revised, and
Drink me': one of John Tenniel's original illustrations for Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland. Photograph: Bettmann/ Corbis

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retitled Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, now credited to a
pseudonymous Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (its popular title) was
about to become the publishing sensation of Christmas 1865. It is said
that among the first avid readers of Alice were
Queen Victoria and the young Oscar Wilde. A
second volume about Alice (Through the Looking-
Glass) followed in 1871. Together these two short
books (Wonderland is barely 28,000 words long)
became two of the most quoted and best-loved
volumes in the English canon.
What is the secret of Carroll's spell?
Everyone will have their own answer, but I want to
identify three crucial elements to the magic of Alice. First, and most
emphatically, this is a story about a quite bad-tempered child that is not
really for children, while at the same time addressing childish
preoccupations. (Who am I? is a question Alice repeatedly vexes herself
with.) Next, it has a dreamlike unreality peopled with some of the most
entertaining characters in English literature. The White Rabbit, the Mad
Hatter, the Mock Turtle, the Cheshire Cat and the King and Queen of
Hearts are simply the most memorable of a cast from which every reader
will find his or her favourite. Third, Carroll possessed an unforced genius
for the most brilliant nonsense and deliciously mad dialogue. With his best
lines ("What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?") he
is never less than intensely quotable.
As well as the enchantment of Carroll's prose, both volumes
of Alice contain numerous songs and poems, many of them parodies of
popular Victorian originals, which have passed into folklore, like Alice
Alice in Wonderland & Through
the Looking-Glass by Lewis
Carroll


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herself: You Are Old, Father William; The Lobster
Quadrille; Beautiful Soup; and (from Through the
Looking-Glass) Jabberwocky; The Walrus and the
Carpenter; and The White Knight's Song.
Finally, for 21st-century readers, it is now almost
obligatory to point out that these books are pre-
Freudian, with a strange, bruised innocence whose
self-interrogations also evoke the tormented
banality of psychoanalysis.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
On 26 November 1865, the Reverend Charles Dodgson's tale was
published by the house of Macmillan as Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel, with whom
Dodgson had a most uneasy relationship. Indeed, the first printing, some
2,000 copies, was withdrawn after Tenniel objected to the print quality of
his drawings. A new edition, released in December of the same year, but
carrying a new date, 1866, was rushed out for the Christmas market.
Later, the discarded first edition was sold with Dodgson's approval to
the New York publisher, Appleton. The title page of the American Alice
became an insert cancelling the original Macmillan title page of 1865, and
bearing the New York publisher's imprint with the date 1866. Here, too,
the first print run sold quickly. First editions are now rare and highly
prized. Both Alice books have never been out of print. Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland has been translated into about 100 languages, including
classical Latin.


Alice encounters the caterpillar in
another Tenniel illustration.
Photograph: Alamy


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http://www.the-office.com/bedtime-
story/aliceunderground.htm

ALICE IN WONDERLAND - ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT

The original manuscript of Lewis Carroll, the pen-name of Charles
Dodgson, is one of the British Library's best-loved treasures. Dodgson
was fond of children and became friends with Lorina, Alice and Edith
Liddell, the young daughters of the Dean of his college, Christ Church.
One summer's day, in 1862, he entertained them on a boat trip with a
story of Alice's adventures in a magical
world entered through a rabbit-hole. The
ten-year-old Alice was so entranced that
she begged him to write it down for her.
It took him some time to write out the
tale - in a tiny, neat hand - and
complete the 37 illustrations. Alice finally
received the 90-page book, dedicated to
'a dear child, in memory of a summer
day', in November 1864.
Urged by friends to publish the story,
Dodgson re-wrote and enlarged it, removing
some of the private family references and adding two new chapters. The
published version was illustrated by the artist John Tenniel.
Many years later, Alice was forced to sell her precious manuscript at
auction. It was bought by an American collector, but returned to England,
in 1948, when a group of American benefactors presented it to the British
Library in appreciation of the British people's role in the Second World
War.

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Here are some extracts of the handwritten manuscript Dodgson gave
Alice. They are mainly of the pages that are illustrated, for as Dodgson
wrote in the book:
And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or
conversation?


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http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/03/alice-in-wonderland-original-manuscript.html