Lewis Carroll Biography!

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was born in Cheshire, England on January 27, 1832 and died on January 14, 1898. He was the eldest son and the third born of a family of seven girls and four boys. His mother, Frances Jane Lutwidge, was the wife of Rev. Charles Dodgson. His mother was a gentle and caring soul, very patient with all of her children. Lewis’s father was the children’s tutors and he raised them very well.

Lewis and his family lived in a little country village and had few acquaintances outside of their family but had no problem entertaining themselves. At the age of 12, Carroll created a magazine named “The Rectory Magazines”, that his family was supposed to contribute to for fun. He also made up games, wrote poems and stories for his brothers and sisters.

In his early years of education, Lewis attended Richmond School, Yorkshire in 1844 to 1845 then switched to Rugby School through 1850. During this time, he got very sick and went deaf in his left ear. After Rugby School, his father tutored him for a year, during his enrollment in Christ Church, Oxford. Carroll excelled in his mathematical studies, coming out at the head of his class. He then preceded a Bachelor of Arts degree that same year. Carroll graduated in 1854, and in 1855 he became a mathematical lecturer at the college. In the year 1861, Lewis became a deacon because of the permanence of the job and he needed to remain unmarried.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson had a frustrating love for little girls throughout his whole life and this love, some say, contributed with his poetry. Some people feel that Carroll never attained real adult love. If he would have tried to grow up and marry, some say that he was not psychologically ready for anything pertaining to adult love. As said in one of my sources, The Many Lives of Lewis Carroll, “He loved little girls, but, like Peter Pan, he had no intention of marrying them.”

While being a deacon, Lewis was a reserved, fussy bachelor who refused to get caught up in the political and religious storms that troubled England. Lewis Carroll, however, was a delightful, lovable companion to the children for whom he created his nonsense stories and poems.

One solution is that he had two personalities: "Lewis Carroll" and "the Deacon Mr. Dodgson," with the problems that go along with having a split personality. There were peculiar things about him—he stammered ever since he was a child, he was extremely fussy about his possessions, and he walked as much as twenty miles a day. But another solution seems more nearly correct: "Dodgson" and "Carroll" were parts of one personality. This personality, because of happiness in childhood and unhappiness in the years thereafter, could blossom only in a world that resembled the happy one he knew while growing up.

Themes that weave in and out of his poetry are: looking through an eye of a child, love, reality and nonsense, life and death, heroic quests, and the tragic and inevitable loss of childhood innocence. Not all of these themes co-exist is all of his poems, but all of these are a lot of themes that weave in and out of his awesome peotry.

http://library.thinkquest.org/10977/carroll/

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ca-Ch/Carroll-Lewis.html

http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/pdf?sid=0af6d54a-3bb5-4048-8b92-88b827898f4a%40sessionmgr4&vid=2&hid=10