
Here he is, Mr. Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson, who gave us Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, among other works of whimsy. He was six-feet tall, with brown curly hair and blue-
grey eyes.
What of the so-called nonsense poems and songs he wrote? Were they really nonsense? For example, the song the Mock Turtle sings in Wonderland, "
OOh, it's all his sorrow he
ain't got no sorrow!" The turtle bemoaned his fate as soon to be soup, but he
wasn't even a genuine turtle, "not fit for the soup tureen." So what was his sorrow? That he was not made of the right stuff, that he could not meet his fate?
Was this a comment slyly inserted by Dodgson self-referential or a comment on mid-19th century colonialism, or perhaps a comment on the state of humankind?
Dodgson, who wrote under the pen name, Lewis Carroll, was a logician as well as a mathematician lecturer at Oxford's Christ Church College. He was also a photographer and took the picture of Alice Liddell, pictured in the last post, in 1858.
Alice in Wonderland was published in 1865 with original illustrations by Lord John Tenniel, just below is Alice with her flamingo cum croquet mallet, by Lord Tenniel.
Alice in Wonderland was a publishing wonder and despite the windfall, Dodgson lectured at Christ Church for twenty more years.