Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born in Daresbury on 27 January 1832 and died on 14 January 1898. He spent most of his adult life at Christ Church, Oxford, where he taught mathematics and was also a deacon, a photographer and a keen inventor of puzzles and games. Under his pen name he wrote the Alice books, which grew out of stories told to the young daughters of a college colleague. They combine gentle absurdity, parody and sharp logic, and they changed children's literature by setting aside the moral lessons that then dominated it. He also wrote nonsense verse, including The Hunting of the Snark, and a long, ambitious fantasy for children and adults. Under his own name he published works on mathematics and logic. His playful sense of language and reason still shapes how readers, writers and thinkers imagine nonsense.