In addition to the free London walks that we offer, such as the Harry Potter London Tour, we are in the process of compiling an entire series of out of London walks which will take in places as diverse as Cambridge, Oxford, Stratford and Bath.
As a little taster of these walks, today we though we’d include one of the tales that features on the Oxford Walks. This one concerns Charles Dodgson (1832 - 1898) who is better known as Lewis Caroll
, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Dodgson “came up” to Christ Church in 1851 and was offered a fellowship in mathematics. He stayed at Christ Church, on and off, for a total of 47 years.
The academic Dodgson was a shy man who had little love of teaching. Indeed he confessed in his diary after only one year on the job that he was “weary of lecturing” and “discouraged.”
His real interests lay in medicine, word-games, and puzzles, as well as photography, then an infant art form.
Dodgson set up a photographic studio on a roof near Tom Tower at Christ Church where he specialized in portraits of famous people, including Alfred Lord Tennyson.
He also liked to photograph little girls, often posed naked. It was one of these little girls - Alice Liddell, the young daughter of the Dean of Christ Church - who became the inspiration for his novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in 1865.
Its huge success surprised the author, who donated much of the profits to various children’s hospitals. It is said that Queen Victoria loved the book so much that she asked Dodgson for an advance copy of his next work.
Obliging her, Dodgson sent the queen a copy of his subsequent book, The Condensation of Determinants, an obtuse mathematical text. The sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, was not published until 1871.
Tags: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Charles Dodgson, Lewis Carol, London walks, Oxford walks, Queen Victoria, trips to Oxford
