Through The Looking Glass

Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a mathematician and writer known for his whimsical stories, intricate wordplay, and innovative use of logic and language. Dodgson was born on January 27, 1832, in Cheshire, England. Carroll had a “lifelong love of writing and mathematics” (4), and he would also become a notable photographer. In 1855, he started teaching mathematics at Oxford’s Christ Church College. The same year, Henry Liddell became the dean of the school, moving there with his wife and three daughters, including Alice Liddell. Carroll soon befriended the Liddell family and started taking their pictures with the newly invented camera. The photographs of the Liddell girls would be the start of a long friendship. On July 4, 1862, Carroll took the Liddell girls, Alice, Lorna, and Edith, out on a boat on the Thames, and the children asked him for a story full of “nonsense.” He began a “tale about a girl named Alice who follows a waistcoat-wearing white rabbit down a wondrous rabbit hole” (4). Carroll would eventually refine the story, first titling it Alice’s Adventures Underground before publishing it as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. He gifted Alice the first published copy of the manuscript as a thank-you for being his muse.