“Sometimes
I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
– Lewis Carroll
While they
may have seemed impossible, for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born on this date in
1832, they were at least worth trying.
Feted for his work as a mathematician, logician, Anglican
deacon, and photographer, Dodgson is, of course, most famous for his
fantastical writings, portrayed in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and
its sequel Through the Looking-Glass – both written under his nom de
plume, Lewis Carroll.
Despite his inclination toward math
and science, he was a longtime writer, starting on poetry and short stories while
still a young teen. He actually had some
moderate successes writing as himself before, in 1856, publishing a wildly
successful romantic poem, “Solitude,” under the name that would make him famous. It was
that same year – the outset of his long career as a teacher of mathematics and
logistics at Christ Church University – that he also took up the new art form
of photography, and started a friendship with the family of University Dean
Henry Liddle.
It was while spending time with the
Liddle family that he began sharing fantastical tales with the three young
Liddle daughters, Lorina, Edith, and Alice.
Alice, it is long-believed (although Dodgson would not verify it) served
as the model for the Lewis Carroll’s title character.
As for photography, Dodgson became
one of the new medium’s top practitioners, establishing his own studio near his
University offices and being lauded as an amateur master of the medium. One of his surviving photos is a great
character study of young Alice, who he
once advised to, “Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it
down afterwards.”
His advice to writers and those
seeking any type 
of quest comes right out of his “Alice” books. “Begin at the beginning,” Carroll noted, “and
go on till you come to the end; then stop.”
Share
A Writer’s Moment with a friend by
clicking the g+1 button below.
No comments:
Post a Comment