The Life of Lewis Carroll

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October 25, 2016

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ( 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better
known by his pen name Lewis Carroll , was an English writer,
mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most
famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the
Looking-Glass, which includes the poem "Jabberwocky", and the poem The
Hunting of the Snark, all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted
for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy. There are societies in many
parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and
the investigation of his life.

Education

Home life
During his early youth, Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists"
preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of
seven, he was reading books such as The Pilgrim's Progress. He also suffered
from a stammer – a condition shared by most of his siblings – that often
influenced his social life throughout his years. At the age of twelve, he was sent
to Richmond Grammar School (now part of Richmond School) at
nearby Richmond.
Rugby
In 1846, Dodgson entered Rugby School where he was evidently unhappy, as
he wrote some years after leaving:
I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through
my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure
from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been
comparative trifles to bear.

Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more
promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby", observed mathematics master
R. B. Mayor.
Oxford
He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and matriculated at Oxford in May 1850 as a
member of his father's old college, Christ Church. After waiting for rooms in
college to become available, he went into residence in January 1851. He had
been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home. His mother
had died of "inflammation of the brain" – perhaps meningitis or a stroke – at
the age of 47.
His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible
distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted and
achievement came easily to him. In 1852, he obtained first-class honours in
Mathematics Moderations, and was shortly thereafter nominated to
a Studentship by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey. In 1854, he
obtained first-class honours in the Final Honours School of Mathematics,
standing first on the list, graduating Bachelor of Arts. He remained at Christ
Church studying and teaching, but the next year he failed an important
scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even
so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical
Lectureship in 1855, which he continued to hold for the next 26 years. Despite
early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various
capacities, until his death.

Character and Appearance

Health challenges
The young adult Charles Dodgson was about 6 feet (1.83 m) tall and slender,
and he had curly brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account).
He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying
himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, although this might be on account of a
knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever
that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of 17, he suffered a severe attack
of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak
chest in later life. Another defect which he carried into adulthood was what he
referred to as his "hesitation", a stammer that he acquired in early childhood
and which plagued him throughout his life.
The stammer has always been a significant part of the image of Dodgson. It is
said that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with
children, but there is no evidence to support this idea. Many children of his
acquaintance remembered the stammer, while many adults failed to notice it.
Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most
people whom he met; it is said that he caricatured himself as
the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, referring to his difficulty in
pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many "facts" often repeated
for which no first-hand evidence remains. He did indeed refer to himself as the
dodo, but whether or not this reference was to his stammer is simply
speculation.
Dodgson's stammer did trouble him, but it was never so debilitating that it
prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society.
He lived in a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and
when singing and recitation were required social skills, and the young Dodgson
was well equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He reportedly could sing
tolerably well and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was adept at
mimicry and storytelling, and was reputedly quite good at charades.
Social connections
In the interim between his early published writing and the success of
the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the pre-Raphaelite social circle. He
first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. He developed a
close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also
knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Arthur Hughes, among
other artists. He also knew fairy-tale author George MacDonald well – it was
the enthusiastic reception of Alice by the young MacDonald children that
convinced him to submit the work for publication.
Politics, religion, and philosophy
In broad terms, Dodgson has traditionally been regarded as politically,
religiously, and personally conservative. Martin Gardner labels Dodgson as
a Tory who was "awed by lords and inclined to be snobbish towards inferiors."
The Reverend W. Tuckwell, in his Reminiscences of Oxford (1900), regarded him
as "austere, shy, precise, absorbed in mathematical reverie, watchfully
tenacious of his dignity, stiffly conservative in political, theological, social
theory, his life mapped out in squares like Alice's landscape." In The Life and
Letters of Lewis Carroll, the editor states that "his Diary is full of such modest
depreciations of himself and his work, interspersed with earnest prayers (too
sacred and private to be reproduced here) that God would forgive him the past,
and help him to perform His holy will in the future.” When a friend asked him
about his religious views, Dodgson wrote in response that he was a member of
the Church of England, but "doubt[ed] if he was fully a 'High Churchman'". He
added:
I believe that when you and I come to lie down for the last time, if only we can
keep firm hold of the great truths Christ taught us—our own utter
worthlessness and His infinite worth; and that He has brought us back to our
one Father, and made us His brethren, and so brethren to one another—we
shall have all we need to guide us through the shadows. Most assuredly I
accept to the full the doctrines you refer to—that Christ died to save us, that
we have no other way of salvation open to us but through His death, and that it
is by faith in Him, and through no merit of ours, that we are reconciled to God;
and most assuredly I can cordially say, "I owe all to Him who loved me, and
died on the Cross of Calvary."

— Carroll (1897)

Dodgson also expressed interest in other fields. He was an early member of

the Society for Psychical Research, and one of his letters suggests that he
accepted as real what was then called "thought reading".] Dodgson wrote some
studies of various philosophical arguments. In 1895, he developed a
philosophical regressus-argument on deductive reasoning in his article "What
the Tortoise Said to Achilles", which appeared in one of the early volumes
of Mind. The article was reprinted in the same journal a hundred years later in
1995, with a subsequent article by Simon Blackburn titled "Practical Tortoise
Raising".

Artistic activities
Literature
From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, contributing
heavily to the family magazine Mischmasch and later sending them to various
magazines, enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work
appeared in the national publications The Comic Times and The Train, as well
as smaller magazines such as the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of
this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and
ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of
real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian
Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day," he wrote in July 1855.
Sometime after 1850, he did write puppet plays for his siblings' entertainment,
of which one has survived: La Guida di Bragia.
In 1856, he published his first piece of work under the name that would make
him famous. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared inThe Train under the
authorship of "Lewis Carroll". This pseudonym was a play on his real
name: Lewis was the anglicised form ofLudovicus, which was the Latin
for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus,
from which comes the nameCharles. The transition went as follows: "Charles
Lutwidge" translated into Latin as "Carolus Ludovicus". This was then
translated back into English as "Carroll Lewis" and then reversed to make
"Lewis Carroll". This pseudonym was chosen by editor Edmund Yates from a
list of four submitted by Dodgson, the others being Edgar Cuthwellis, Edgar U.
C. Westhill, and Louis Carroll.

Alice books
In 1856, Dean (i.e., head of the college) Henry Liddell arrived at Christ Church,
bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in
Dodgson's life over the following years, and would greatly influence his writing
career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife Lorina and their
children, particularly the three sisters Lorina, Edith, and Alice Liddell. He was
widely assumed for many years to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice
Liddell; the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass spells out
her name in full, and there are also many superficial references to her hidden
in the text of both books. It has been noted that Dodgson himself repeatedly
denied in later life that his "little heroine" was based on any real child, and he
frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names
in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataway's name
appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and it is not
suggested that this means that any of the characters in the narrative are based
on her.
Information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing),
but it seems clear that his friendship with the Liddell family was an important
part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the
children on rowing trips (first the boy Harry, and later the three girls)
accompanied by an adult friend to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.
It was on one such expedition on 4 July 1862 that Dodgson invented the
outline of the story that eventually became his first and greatest commercial
success. He told the story to Alice Liddell and she begged him to write it down,
and Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten,
illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground in November
1864.
Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgson's
incomplete manuscript, and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children
encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished
manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the
possible alternative titles were rejected – Alice Among the Fairies and Alice's
Golden Hour – the work was finally published as Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had
first used some nine years earlier. The illustrations this time were by Sir John
Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the
skills of a professional artist. Annotated versions provide insights into many of
the ideas and hidden meanings that are prevalent in these books. Critical
literature has often proposed Freudian interpretations of the book as "a
descent into the dark world of the subconscious", as well as seeing it as a
satire upon contemporary mathematical advances.
The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed
Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon
spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes
unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen
Victoria herself enjoyed Alice In Wonderland so much that she commanded that
he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next
work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled An Elementary Treatise on
Determinants. Dodgson himself vehemently denied this story, commenting "... It
is utterly false in every particular: nothing even resembling it has
occurred"; and it is unlikely for other reasons. As T.B. Strong comments in
a Times article, "It would have been clean contrary to all his practice to identify
[the] author of Alice with the author of his mathematical works".[49][50] He also
began earning quite substantial sums of money, but continued with his
seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.
 Late in 1871, he published the sequel Through the Looking-Glass and What
Alice Found There. (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives "1872" as
the date of publication.) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the
changes in Dodgson's life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him
into a depression that lasted some years.

In 1876, Dodgson produced his next great work The Hunting of the Snark, a
fantastical "nonsense" poem exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of nine
tradesmen and one beaver, who set off to find the snark. Painter Dante Gabriel
Rossetti reputedly became convinced that the poem was about him.

Sylvie and Bruno

In 1895, 30 years after publication of his masterpieces, Carroll attempted a
comeback, producing a two-volume tale of the fairy siblings Sylvie and Bruno.
Carroll entwines two plots set in two alternative worlds, one set in rural
England and the other in the fairytale kingdoms of Elfland, Outland, and
others. The fairytale world satirizes English society, and more specifically the
world of academia. Sylvie and Bruno came out in two volumes and is
considered a lesser work, although it has remained in print for over a century.

Photography
In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography under the influence
first of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later of his Oxford friend Reginald
Southey.] He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-
photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living
out of it in his very early years.
A study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling exhaustively lists every
surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over half of his surviving work
depicts young girls, though about 60% of his original photographic portfolio is
now missing. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, boys, and
landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues, paintings,
and trees. His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance and
many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden because natural sunlight
was required for good exposures.
He also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social
circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of
notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday, Lord Salisbury, andAlfred,
Lord Tennyson.
By the time that Dodgson abruptly ceased photography (1880, over 24 years),
he had established his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, created around
3,000 images, and was an amateur master of the medium, though fewer than
1,000 images have survived time and deliberate destruction. He stopped taking
photographs because keeping his studio working was too time-consuming. He
used the wet collodion process; commercial photographers who started using
the dry-plate process in the 1870s took pictures more quickly. Popular taste
changed with the advent of Modernism, affecting the types of photographs that
he produced.

Inventions
To promote letter writing, Dodgson invented "The Wonderland Postage-Stamp
Case" in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for
inserting the most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other
current denominations up to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slip
case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the
back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. The pack also
included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture Eight or Nine Wise Words
About Letter-Writing.
Another invention was a writing tablet called the nyctograph that allowed note-
taking in the dark, thus eliminating the need to get out of bed and strike a light
when one woke with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with
sixteen squares and system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's
design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on
a Palm device.
He also devised a number of games, including an early version of what today is
known as Scrabble. He appears to have invented – or at least certainly
popularized – the "doublet" (see word ladder), a form of brain-teaser that is still
popular today, changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time,
each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT
is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG. The
games and puzzles of Lewis Carroll was the subject of Martin Gardner's March
1960 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.
Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means
for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociam (a
type of tricycle); new systems of parliamentary representation; more fair
elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order;
rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a
number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the Senior Common Room at
Christ Church which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur
for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip to fasten envelopes or mount
things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book
placed sideways; and at least two ciphers forcryptography.
Mathematical work

A posthumous portrait of Lewis Carroll by Hubert von Herkomer, based on

photographs. This painting now hangs in the Great Hall ofChrist Church,
Oxford.

Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in

the fields of geometry, linear and matrix algebra, mathematical logic,
and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books under his real
name. Dodgson also developed new ideas in linear algebra (e.g., the first
printed proof of the Kronecker-Capelli theorem), probability, and the study of
elections (e.g., Dodgson's method) and committees; some of this work was not
published until well after his death. His occupation as Mathematical Lecturer
at Christ Church gave him some financial security.
His mathematical work attracted renewed interest in the late 20th century.
Martin Gardner's book on logic machines and diagrams and William Warren
Bartley's posthumous publication of the second part of Carroll's symbolic logic
book have sparked a reevaluation of Carroll's contributions to symbolic
logic. Robbins' and Rumsey's investigation of Dodgson condensation, a method
of evaluating determinants, led them to the Alternating Sign Matrix conjecture,
now a theorem. The discovery in the 1990s of additional ciphers that Carroll
had constructed, in addition to his "Memoria Technica", showed that he had
employed sophisticated mathematical ideas in their creation.

Correspondence
Dodgson wrote and received as many as 98,721 letters, according to a special
letter register which he devised. He documented his advice about how to write
more satisfying letters in a missive entitled "Eight or Nine Wise Words About
Letter-Writing".
Migraine and epilepsy
In his diary for 1880, Dodgson recorded experiencing his first episode
of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of "moving
fortifications" that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the
syndrome. Unfortunately, there is no clear evidence to show whether this was
his first experience of migraine per se, or if he may have previously suffered the
far more common form of migraine without aura, although the latter seems
most likely, given the fact that migraine most commonly develops in the teens
or early adulthood. Another form of migraine aura called Alice in Wonderland
syndrome has been named after Dodgson's little heroine because its
manifestation can resemble the sudden size-changes in the book. It is also
known as micropsia and macropsia, a brain condition affecting the way that
objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at
a larger object such as a basketball and perceive it as if it were the size of a golf
ball. Some authors have suggested that Dodgson may have suffered from this
type of aura and used it as an inspiration in his work, but there is no evidence
that he did.
Dodgson also suffered two attacks in which he lost consciousness. He was
diagnosed by a Dr. Morshead, Dr. Brooks, and Dr. Stedman, and they believed
the attack and a consequent attack to be an "epileptiform" seizure (initially
thought to be fainting, but Brooks changed his mind). Some have concluded
from this that he was a lifetime sufferer of this condition, but there is no
evidence of this in his diaries beyond the diagnosis of the two attacks already
mentioned. Some authors, in particular Sadi Ranson, have suggested that
Carroll may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy in which consciousness
is not always completely lost, but altered, and in which the symptoms mimic
many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had at least one
incident in which he suffered full loss of consciousness and awoke with a
bloody nose, which he recorded in his diary and noted that the episode left him
not feeling himself for "quite sometime afterward". This attack was diagnosed
as possibly "epileptiform" and Carroll himself later wrote of his "seizures" in the
same diary.
Most of the standard diagnostic tests of today were not available in the
nineteenth century. Recently, Dr Yvonne Hart, consultant neurologist at
the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, considered Dodgson's symptoms. Her
conclusion, quoted in Jenny Woolf's The Mystery of Lewis Carroll, is that
Dodgson very likely had migraine, and may have had epilepsy, but she
emphasises that she would have considerable doubt about making a diagnosis
of epilepsy without further information.

Later years
Dodgson's existence remained little changed over the remaining twenty years of
his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame. He continued to teach at
Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death. The
two volumes of his last novel Sylvie and Bruno were published in 1889 and
1893, but the intricacy of this work was apparently not appreciated by
contemporary readers; it achieved nothing like the success of the Alice books,
with disappointing reviews and sales of only 13,000 copies.
The only known occasion on which he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in
1867 as an ecclesiastic, together with the Reverend Henry Liddon. He recounts
the travel in his "Russian Journal", which was first commercially published in
1935. On his way to Russia and back, he also saw different cities in Belgium,
Germany, the partitioned Poland, and France.
He died of pneumonia following influenza on 14 January 1898 at his sisters'
home, "The Chestnuts", in Guildford. He was two weeks away from turning 66
years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.
Literary Works

"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of

an animal called "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through
the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland. The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front
world of a looking glass.
In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece
characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a
seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an
inverted world, she recognises that the verses on the pages are written
in mirror-writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems, and reads the
reflected verse of "Jabberwocky". She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as
the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape.
"Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in
English. Its playful, whimsical language has given Englishnonsense
words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle".

Possible interpretations of words

 Bandersnatch: A swift moving creature with snapping jaws, capable of

extending its neck. A 'bander' was also an archaic word for a 'leader',
suggesting that a 'bandersnatch' might be an animal that hunts the leader
of a group.
 Beamish: Radiantly beaming, happy, cheerful. Although Carroll may have
believed he had coined this word, usage in 1530 is cited in the Oxford
English Dictionary.
 Borogove: Following the poem Humpty Dumpty says: " 'borogove' is a thin
shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, something like
a live mop." In explanatory book notes Carroll describes it further as "an
extinct kind of Parrot. They had no wings, beaks turned up, made their
nests under sun-dials and lived on veal."
 In Hunting of the Snark, Carroll says that the initial syllable of borogove is
pronounced as in borrow rather than as in worry.
 Brillig: Following the poem, the character of Humpty Dumpty comments: "
'Brillig' means four o'clock in the afternoon, the time when you begin
broiling things for dinner." According to Mischmasch, it is derived from the
verb to bryl or broil.
 Burbled: In a letter of December 1877, Carroll notes that "burble" could be
a mixture of the three verbs 'bleat', 'murmur', and 'warble', although he did
not remember creating it.
 Chortled: "Combination of 'chuckle' and 'snort'."
 Frabjous: Possibly a blend of fair, fabulous, and joyous. Definition
from Oxford English Dictionary, credited to Lewis Carroll.
 Frumious: Combination of "fuming" and "furious". In Hunting of the
Snark Carroll comments, "[T]ake the two words 'fuming' and 'furious'. Make
up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you
will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever
so little towards 'fuming', you will say 'fuming-furious'; if they turn, by even
a hair's breadth, towards 'furious', you will say 'furious-fuming'; but if you
have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say 'frumious'."
 Galumphing: Perhaps used in the poem as a blend of 'gallop' and
'triumphant'. Used later by Kipling, and cited by Webster as "To move with a
clumsy and heavy tread"
 Gimble: Humpty comments that it means: "to make holes like a gimlet." The
setting for spinning objects such as gyroscopes.
 Gyre: "To 'gyre' is to go round and round like a gyroscope." Gyre is entered
in the OED from 1420, meaning a circular or spiral motion or form;
especially a giant circular oceanic surface current. However, Carroll also
wrote in Mischmasch that it meant to scratch like a dog. The g is
pronounced like the /g/ in gold, not like gem.
 Jabberwock: When a class in the Girls' Latin School in Boston asked
Carroll's permission to name their school magazine The Jabberwock, he
replied: "The Anglo-Saxon word 'wocer' or 'wocor' signifies 'offspring' or
'fruit'. Taking 'jabber' in its ordinary acceptation of 'excited and voluble
discussion', this would give the meaning of 'the result of much excited and
voluble discussion'..."
 Jubjub bird: 'A desperate bird that lives in perpetual passion', according to
the Butcher in Carroll's later poem The Hunting of the Snark. 'Jub' is an
ancient word for a jerkinor a dialect word for the trot of a horse. It might
make reference to the call of the bird resembling the sound "jub, jub".
 Manxome: Possibly 'fearsome'; Possibly a portmanteau of "manly" and
"buxom", the latter relating to men for most of its history; or "three-legged"
after the Triskelion emblem of the Manx people from the Isle of Man.
 Mimsy: Humpty comments that " 'Mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' ".
 Mome: Humpty Dumpty is uncertain about this one: "I think it's short for
'from home', meaning that they'd lost their way, you know". The notes
in Mischmasch give a different definition of 'grave' (via 'solemome',
'solemone' and 'solemn').
 Outgrabe: Humpty says " 'outgribing' is something between bellowing and
whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle". Carroll's book appendices
suggest it is the past tense of the verb to 'outgribe', connected with the old
 verb to 'grike' or 'shrike', which derived 'shriek' and 'creak' and hence
'squeak'.
 Rath: Humpty Dumpty says following the poem: "A 'rath' is a sort of green
pig". Carroll's notes for the original in Mischmasch state that a 'Rath' is "a
species of land turtle. Head erect, mouth like a shark, the front forelegs
curved out so that the animal walked on its knees, smooth green body, lived
on swallows and oysters." In the 1951 animated film adaptation of the
book's prequel, the raths are depicted as small, multi-coloured creatures
with tufty hair, round eyes, and long legs resembling pipe stems.
 Slithy: Humpty Dumpty says: " 'Slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. 'Lithe' is the
same as 'active'. You see it's like a portmanteau, there are two meanings
packed up into one word." The original in MischMasch notes that 'slithy'
means "smooth and active" The i is long, as in writhe.
 Snicker-snack: possibly related to the large knife, the snickersnee.
 Tove: Humpty Dumpty says " 'Toves' are something like badgers, they're
something like lizards, and they're something like corkscrews. [...] Also they
make their nests under sun-dials, also they live on cheese." Pronounced so
as to rhyme with groves. They "gyre and gimble," i.e. rotate and bore. Toves
are described slightly differently inMischmasch: "a species of Badger [which]
had smooth white hair, long hind legs, and short horns like a stag [and]
lived chiefly on cheese".
 Tulgey: Carroll himself said he could give no source for Tulgey. Could be
taken to mean thick, dense, dark. It has been suggested that it comes from
the Anglo-Cornish word "Tulgu", 'darkness', which in turn comes from
the Cornish language "Tewolgow" 'darkness, gloominess'.
 Uffish: Carroll noted "It seemed to suggest a state of mind when the voice is
gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish".
 Vorpal: Carroll said he could not explain this word, though it has been
noted that it can be formed by taking letters alternately from "verbal" and
"gospel".
 Wabe: The characters in the poem suggest it means "The grass plot around
a sundial", called a 'wa-be' because it "goes a long way before it, and a long
way behind it". In the original MischMasch text, Carroll states a 'wabe' is
"the side of a hill (from its being soaked by rain)".
Other Works

 La Guida di Bragia, a Ballad Opera for the Marionette Theatre (around 1850)
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
 Rhyme? And Reason? (1869; also published as Phantasmagoria)
 Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (includes
"Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter") (1871)
 The Hunting of the Snark (1876)
 A Tangled Tale (1885)
 Sylvie and Bruno (1889)
 Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893)
 Pillow Problems (1893)
 What the Tortoise Said to Achilles (1895)
 Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Lewis Carroll self-portrait c. 1856