However, it is under the pen name, Lewis Carroll that he is recognized around the world. Writing as Carroll, he is best known as the creator of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, works which are usually considered the greatest and most influential children's books ever written in English.

His Life: Childhood

At the age of twelve he was sent to a boys' school in Richmond, where he composed Latin verses and wrote stories for the school magazine. However, he was tormented by the other students, an experience which may help explain his lifelong preference for the society of little girls.

His Life: School

In December 1854 Dodgson was awarded the degree of bachelor of arts, and he was made a "master of the house" the next year. His duties included lecturing in mathematics and teaching private pupils.

Around this time he took the pen name, Lewis Carroll. Under this name he was to become known worldwide. He earned a master's degree in 1857 and continued to teach, but although he had many friends, he complained of the monotony of the college routine.

In 1855 he wrote the first lines of "Jabberwocky" as an attempt to parody Anglo-Saxon poetry.

His Life: The Man

Lewis Carroll, however, was a delightful, lovable companion to the children for whom he created his engrossing nonsense stories and poems. That both men were one has long puzzled biographers and psychologists.

Some biographers have concluded that his personality, "because of happiness in childhood and unhappiness in the formative years thereafter, could act in the adult world only within the limits of formality and could blossom only in a world that resembled the one he knew as a child."

He became an excellent photographer and a lecturer in mathematics in the college, and he lived for the rest of his life in rooms there. He also contributed to a small paper, "The Comic Times". When this paper changed hands the whole staff left and began a new venture, The Train, for which Dodgson wrote stories and poems.

Early in 1898 Dodgeson became ill with influenza, and he died on the fourteenth of January. On the white cross that marks his grave in Old Guildford Cemetery are the words "Thy Will be Done." At the suggestion of a young friend, donations from children were used to endow a cot in Children's Hospital in his memory.

His Writings:

The "Alice" Books

On July 4, 1862, Dodgson took a riverboat ride with the three young daughters of the college dean, Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddel. He told them a story about "Alice's Adventures Underground." When little Alice coaxed him to write out the story for her, he did so, calling it "Alice's Hour in Elfland."

In 1864 it became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and artist John Tenniel was asked to illustrate it. Collingwood writes of his uncle: "His memory was so good that I believe that the story as he wrote it down was almost word for word the same that he had told in the boat." In time Dodgson added a sequel, Through the Looking Glass, which was equally popular.

These two works, which are usually treated as a whole and are loosely structured around a pack of cards and a game of chess, describe how a curious seven-year-old girl enters two dream worlds: one she enters by falling down a rabbit hole, the other by passing through a mirror.

Through her experiences, which are frustrating as well as wonderful, Alice meets a host of fascinating and unusual characters, both human and animal. As Alice meets these creatures, she is drawn into unfamiliar societies that challenge her knowledge and beliefs. She becomes involved in a series of amusing and often disagreeable events that test her perceptions of time, space, form, and sense.

Surprising and terrifying, yet with their own inherent logic, the worlds in which Alice finds herself are revealed through her reactions to them. Each book concludes with Alice ending her dream after becoming disgusted with the insanity, selfishness, and cruelty she has encountered.

The classic tale of that ever-curious little girl who tumbled down a rabbit hole into Wonderland has enchanted readers for nearly 140 years. Today, Alice and the eccentric creatures that she meets-the Cheshire Cat, the Mock Turtle, the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter-continue to be among the most-loved characters in all literature.

From Amazon.com reviews:
The poem itself is a conversation between a man of 42 and a less than adept ghost. Among the things learned are the 5 rules of behavior for a ghost, the housing requirements for a ghost etc. Carroll's vintage humor is expressed in a narrative poem of seven cantos using verses of five rhymed lines. The poetry is well written - the rhymes are not forced but natural, the humor relatively subtle. This book justifies its being in the series "Literary Classics".

When Trough the Looking glass was published in 1871, readers were as delighted with that book as they were with Lewis Carroll's first masterpiece, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the topsy-turvy world that lies beyond the looking-glass, Alice meets such fantastical characters as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, and the Jabberwock.

Carroll claimed that the inspiration for THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK (1876) sprang from 'one line of verse - one solitary line of verse - "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see"', that came to him one day in 1874 while he was out walking. To questions asking whether the poem was an allegory, or a political satire, or contained some hidden moral, he claimed to have 'but one answer, "I don't know!"' (The Theatre, 1887).

From Amazon.com:
These two works show the same quirky humor. Here you see Carroll the mathematician at his playful best. Don't let the title of the first work mislead you--this isn't about modern symbolic logic but about ways of expressing classical logic with symbols. It's loaded with amusing problems to delight any mathematical puzzler. In the second work he turns logic into a game played with diagrams and colored counters, giving you hundreds of challenging and witty syllogisms to solve. Great mind-stretching fun.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature:
This was his final work for children. The novel attained some popularity, but was considered puzzling and disjointed. Containing more banter between the two siblings than plot, the convoluted story operates on two parallel levels, one realistic and didactic, and the other dreamlike and fantastic. It includes elements of fairy tales (Sylvie and Bruno are fairy children bent on doing good works and saving a throne), and sentimental moralizing.

Some of the most famous poems:

Tweedledee and Tweedledum

`Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.'

Through The Looking Glass
by Lewis Carroll