Born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson at Daresbury, Cheshire, England, in 1832, he was educated at Rugby and Oxford, took orders in 1861, and was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford, from 1855-81 when he resigned to devote his life to writing under his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll.
As a boy he was fascinated by the craft of conjuring and this, together with ideas for games, puzzles, anagrams, riddles, chess problems, mathematical recreation and logic, occupied his mind for all of his life. He was responsible for many original puzzles and new innovations, including ‘Doublets’ invented in 1879 and ‘The Game of Logic’ in 1886.
One can appreciate the extent of his obsession with puzzles when considering that almost all seventy-two of his ‘Pillow-Problems’, many of which had complicated mathematical solutions, were compiled by him while lying awake at night. He would commit nothing to paper until the morning, when he would first of all write down the answer, followed by the question and then the detailed solution.
The children’s classic: ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) was written for the young Alice Liddell, the daughter of the head of his Oxford college. along with its sequel ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (1872) it combines elements of fantasy, logic and nonsense. He also wrote nonsense verse, notably ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (1876).
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