Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)
Author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
About the Author
**Please do not combine "Alicia in Terra Mirabili" and "Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus" with the modern-language versions of these books. They fall under the dead language exception to the usual combining of different translations. Thanks!
**Please exercise extreme caution in merging pop-up books with the main work: in most cases, they should not be combined.
**Please do not combine The Annotated Alice with any of the "normal" Alice editions, nor the Annotated Snark with the Hunting of the Snark.
**Please also do not combine The Annotated Alice with The Annotated Alice : The Definitive Edition as the latter contains both The Annotated Alice, More Annotated Alice, and additional material. Thanks!
Series
Works by Lewis Carroll
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Carroll, Lewis
- Legal name
- Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge
- Other names
- An Unendowed Researcher
C.L.D.
Oedipus - Birthdate
- 1832-01-27
- Date of death
- 1898-01-14
- Burial location
- Mount Cemetery, Guildford, Surrey, England, UK
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- UK
- Country (for map)
- England, UK
- Birthplace
- Daresbury, Cheshire, England, UK
- Place of death
- Guildford, Surrey, England, UK
- Cause of death
- Pneumonia
- Places of residence
- Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Whitburn Sands, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England, UK - Education
- Rugby School, Rugby, England, UK
Christ Church, Oxford - Occupations
- writer
mathematician
photographer
logician
cleric
artist - Relationships
- Fox, Alice Wilson (cousin)
Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson (nephew)
Ruskin, John (friend)
Kitchin, G. W. (friend) - Organizations
- Church of England
Christ Church College, Oxford - Short biography
- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem "Jabberwocky", and the poem "The Hunting of the Snark", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy.
- Disambiguation notice
- **Please do not combine "Alicia in Terra Mirabili" and "Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus" with the modern-language versions of these books. They fall under the dead language exception to the usual combining of different translations. Thanks!
**Please exercise extreme caution in merging pop-up books with the main work: in most cases, they should not be combined.
**Please do not combine The Annotated Alice with any of the "normal" Alice editions, nor the Annotated Snark with the Hunting of the Snark.
**Please also do not combine The Annotated Alice with The Annotated Alice : The Definitive Edition as the latter contains both The Annotated Alice, More Annotated Alice, and additional material. Thanks!
Members
Discussions
Reviews
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 1,189
- Also by
- 112
- Members
- 93,085
- Popularity
- #100
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 1,298
- ISBNs
- 4,956
- Languages
- 64
- Favorited
- 367
Where Alice comes across primarily as a whimsical tale told in reaction to the surrounding scenery and the reactions of the girls as Carroll entertained them on a Sunday afternoon, Through the Looking Glass feels embedded with life lessons as Alice makes her way across an imaginary landscape, overcoming various tests and tribulations (much like growing up). The physical representations of the fording of streams within the narrative feels particularly like goals accomplished and rewards given.
Both books succeed because of the obvious interplay between two worlds, with Alice the child unintendedly displaying her limited understanding of the rules and manners of the adult world through the illogical, ironical characters she meets. The tyrannical Red Queen. The ever-late White Rabbit. Tweedledee and Tweedledum and their long tale "The Walrus and the Carpenter," who graciously take all the young oysters out for a walk and a talk; only in the poem's final sentence do we learn that the gallant heroes have actually "eaten every one" (an admonition, perhaps, not to trust seemingly helpful adults?). My favorite chapter, "The Lion and the Unicorn," relates Alice's interactions with the King as he incessantly takes Alice's words literally. When she tells him she sees nobody on the road, he is envious of her vision to see an actual Nobody who is out of the King's range. When his messenger tells him nobody is faster than he, the King contradicts him, saying that obviously Nobody is not swifter, else he would already have arrived with the message.
While the jacket blurb implies deeper meanings hidden within Alice—"a satire on language [and] political allegory"—I think the entire story is simply an educated man's amusement told to a friend's daughters, influenced and embellished by his adult awareness of the gap between his world and theirs.
* - I have posted the same review for each book, seeing how, for me at least, it is difficult to separate the two or read only one.… (more)