His father was a brilliant scholar, who studied at Westminster and then Oxford, before entering the church. He was conservative with leanings toward Newman and Anglo-Catholicism and inclined toward High Church. Charles, father, retired to the country after marrying a cousin in 1827, eventually obtaining the office of Arch Deacon of Ripon and translated Tertullian.
Being the first-born son, he was named after his father and grandfather before him. He was precocious, already reading Pigrim's Progress when he was seven. Although naturally left-handed, he was forced to convert to his right, which caused complications throughout his life. When he was twelve, he was sent to school at Richmond, In 1845, he moved on to Rugby where he was apparently sexually abused during the night. In 1851, he entered Christ Church, Oxford when his mother died unexpectedly from a brain fever. Charles achieved Honors and received a Studentship and later given a Lectureship for Mathematics at Christ Church, which he maintained much of his life.
He suffered whooping cough when he was seventeen which caused an inner ear infection and resulted in a slight stammer from the haring loss. The stammar is often over-dramatized in biographies and played as if Dodgson was a shy, retiring fellow. In fact, he was not.
The world recognizes Charles Dodgson as Lewis Carroll who was born on March 1, 1856. The pseudonymn first appeared on a poem, Solitude in a Train. Dodgson was then teaching reluctantly at Christ Church when Henry Liddell appeared as Dean of the College with his wife and three daughters: Ina, Alice and Edith. Much has been written about the paedophile tendencies and the relationship between Alice and Charles Dodgson. Dodgson befriended the family, taking the girls and their mother on outings and on one such outing, the story of Alice falling down the rabbit hole was born. Alice requested the story written out, and Dodgson, seeing the potential of publication, did so. Lewis Carroll became the public image of the author.
Later he described his relationships with younger women as "child-friend", but this did not necessarily indicate the person of whom he was speaking was a child or juvenile. He maintained relationships and correspondence with his younger acquaintances over a span of years until they were fully mature women, and frequently caused scandal within society for not conforming to the social pressures of Victorian High Church morals. The problem is that it is rather difficult to tell which is who-whether Dodgson was Lewis Carroll or Carroll really a myth looking back at society through the warped surface of the Looking Glass.
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