Maybe you know him only by the name "Lewis Carroll" (his pen name),
and maybe you don't know about him at all...
That's alright! Let me enlighten you about one of my favorite authors, poets, and photographers: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson a.k.a.
Lewis Carroll, the author of
Alice in Wonderland
and the
Through the Looking Glass
tales & many others.
You may mentally chide me for even referencing it ( I would too!), but Wikipedia really summarizes it best:
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (pronounced /ˈdɒdsən/ dod-sən; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/ karr-əl), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.
He really was an interesting person. I have read several biographies on him and what truly amuses me the most is just
how widely all of his biographers differ in opinion on his life & person! You have everything from some claiming he was an insane, drugged-out pedophile all the way to saying that he was a genius and a saint! (Personally I don't believe either of those extremes.)
The fact that he was a mathematician is generally not known as well as his authorship. But he was indeed all those things--a man of many interests, if not many proficient talents. He was smart & witty, if extremely shy/reserved in person. He seemed to prefer the company of children rather than adults (which I can sometimes identify with quite well.) He found his lyrical, comical literary voice first through telling stories that baffled, amused and entertained his little friends...and then later the wider world.
One thing is for sure: if you are going to study literature, and especially English lit, you can't ignore Lewis Carroll. He left a mark on our world.
Now, onto the most interesting pieces of his history that I've been digging up about him...
...his photography.
In addition to being a poet, deacon, mathematician, & all those other things, Charles Dodgson was a photographer. In his time, I suppose he would have been considered just another amateur, but I think his work had a timeless, lasting & highly artistic quality about it. For a while, I couldn't seem to locate any of these photographs of his that were talked about so much, other than the one of Alice Liddell (the girl whose name & person inspired Alice from his books) leaning up against an ivy wall as a ''beggar child''.
But now....I am proud to say, I have scrounged up several more photographs that he took, and now, I present them to you here:
{Click to make some larger.}
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| Alice Liddell (right) and older sister Lorina (left). |
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| Alice Liddell |
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| young Alice Liddell |
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| "The Beggar Girl" aka Alice Liddell |
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| Alice Liddell as a young woman. |
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| Self portrait of Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson. |
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| Edith, Lorina & Alice Liddell (L to R) |
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| Mrs Liddell, her girls, Charles Dodgson & another young friend. |
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| Edith, Lorina & Alice |
Are they not just beautiful?
Looking at them makes me wish I had a old tintype camera to play with, and that I still had my film Canon SLR too! Ah, well. I still have my appreciation for the arts, my tiny Canon digital, and my love of photography. :) That's enough for now.
