Lewis Carroll

Hello! You may know me as Lewis Carroll, but that was my special storytelling name. My real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. I was born on January 27th, 1832, in a little village in England called Daresbury. Life in our house was always exciting because I was one of eleven children. Our home was always full of fun and games! To entertain my brothers and sisters, I loved making up puzzles and riddles, telling silly stories that made them giggle, and putting on puppet shows with characters I created just for them.

When I grew up, I went to a big school called the University of Oxford. In 1855, I became a professor there at a college called Christ Church. The subject I taught was mathematics, which I loved very much. To me, numbers and logic were like fun puzzles waiting to be solved. But even though I was a serious professor during the day, I never stopped loving to tell stories and be playful. Around this time, I also found a new hobby: photography! I enjoyed taking pictures of people, especially my friends, to capture a moment in time.

Some of my very favorite friends were the Liddell children, whose father was the head of my college. On a sunny afternoon, July 4th, 1862, I took three of the sisters—Lorina, Edith, and Alice—on a boat trip down the river. To keep them from getting bored on the slow, quiet ride, I started telling a brand new story. It was about a curious little girl named Alice who followed a White Rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a magical world called Wonderland. The real Alice Liddell loved the story so much that she asked me, 'Oh, Mr. Dodgson, I wish you would write out Alice's adventures for me!'.

And so, I did! I went home and wrote the whole story down, and I even drew my own funny pictures to go with it. When it came time to publish the book for everyone to read, I decided to use my pen name, Lewis Carroll. In 1865, my book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was shared with the world. Children everywhere loved reading about the Mad Hatter, the disappearing Cheshire Cat, and the bossy Queen of Hearts. The book was so popular that a few years later, in 1871, I wrote another book about her called Through the Looking-Glass.

I kept writing stories and teaching mathematics for many years. I lived to be 65 years old. Even today, children and grown-ups still open my books to travel to Wonderland with Alice. I hope my stories remind you that the most wonderful adventures can begin with a little bit of curiosity and a lot of imagination.