Stuart Dodgson Collingwood presents a comprehensive memoir of his celebrated uncle, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known to the world as Lewis Carroll. The book traces his ancestry from northern England through his early years at Daresbury and Croft, where the young boy invented fanciful diversions and lived in a self-made wonderland of animals and imaginary games.
The narrative follows Dodgson to Rugby School and subsequently to Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated in eighteen hundred and fifty and spent the remainder of his life as a student, tutor, and lecturer. While maintaining a demanding career in mathematics, publishing treatises on determinants and Euclidean geometry, he developed a parallel passion for photography, capturing portraits of eminent Victorians including Tennyson, Ruskin, and the young children who inspired his literary masterpieces.
The genesis of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is detailed through river excursions with the Liddell sisters, capturing the spontaneous storytelling that birthed a classic. Subsequent chapters explore the publication of Through the Looking-Glass, The Hunting of the Snark, and his various logical and mathematical works, interspersed with extensive correspondence and diary entries that illuminate his literary methods.
Throughout the memoir, the author portrays a man of deep piety and gentle humour, dedicated to his clerical duties and intensely fond of children, yet remarkably shy and reticent regarding his own fame. The later sections chronicle his routine as a senior don, his curatorship of the common room, and his continued output of clever mathematical puzzles and verse, culminating in a portrait of a rich, industrious life dedicated to truth, learning, and innocent recreation.
The closing pages touch upon his final days, reflecting a career marked by intellectual rigour and whimsical genius. The biography successfully bridges the gap between the academic mathematician and the beloved children's author, leaving the reader with a fuller knowledge of a complex and affectionate personality.
