Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of the English writer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), whose best known works are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872). These children’s books also appeal to adults because of the scathing political satire and verbal wit they contain.

Carroll was the son of a clergyman and the eldest male in a family of seven girls and four boys. From 1846 to 1850 he attended Rugby School and he graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1854. After graduation, Carroll became a mathematics lecturer in the college. Although he took deacon’s orders in 1861, he was never ordained a priest, partly because he was afflicted with a stammer that made preaching difficult and partly, perhaps, because he had discovered other interests.

Carroll’s other works include The Hunting of the Snark (1876), Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893). He was a keen photographer and in a twenty-four-year period he created over 3,000 photographs.

Carroll died on 14 January 1898, after a short illness. He never married.