49 Fun Facts About Lewis Carroll

What was Lewis Carroll's real name?

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He wanted a pen name for the pieces he was getting into print, and his editor picked Lewis Carroll from a list of four he offered.

In which English county was Carroll born, at All Saints' Vicarage in Daresbury?

Cheshire. The county was linked to a grin long before Alice: people were already saying 'to grin like a Cheshire cat' in the 1700s, so he borrowed the cat's smile from an old saying.

Young Carroll wrote a series of what for his ten siblings?

Magazines. All eleven children were meant to contribute, but he ended up writing nearly everything in the surviving issues himself.

Which public school, the setting of Tom Brown's School Days, did Carroll attend and dislike intensely?

Rugby. He wrote that no earthly consideration would make him repeat his three years there, yet his maths master said he had not taught a more promising boy at the school.

Alice's journey in Through the Looking-Glass is plotted as the moves of which game?

Chess. Alice starts as a white pawn on the second square and is promised a crown when she reaches the eighth, just as a pawn is promoted to a queen.

At which Oxford college did Carroll study, teach and live for the rest of his life?

Christ Church. His place there depended on staying unmarried and taking holy orders, and he held it, along with his college rooms, until he died.

Which nonsense poem by Carroll gave English the word 'chortle'?

Jabberwocky. 'Chortle' is thought to blend chuckle and snort, and Alice can only read the poem at all by holding its back-to-front print up to a mirror.

Which speech impediment did Carroll have from early childhood?

A stammer. He called it his 'hesitation', and the tale that it vanished around children doesn't hold up: many of his child friends remembered it.

A boyhood illness left Carroll with which lasting disability?

Deafness in one ear. Whooping cough in his teens did further damage, probably causing the weak chest that troubled him for the rest of his life.

How was the pen name 'Lewis Carroll' constructed?

His first names Latinised, re-Englished and reversed. He also offered his editor an anagram of the same two names, Edgar Cuthwellis, which lost out to this one.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Hatter asks why a raven is like what?

A writing-desk. The Hatter admits he hasn't the slightest idea of the answer, and Carroll later confirmed that he invented the riddle with no answer at all.

The pen name Lewis Carroll first appeared in print in 1856 on which kind of work?

A serious poem. Biographers name either 'Solitude' or 'The Path of Roses', both printed in The Train that year, so the name now tied to nonsense began on earnest verse.

Alice Liddell's father, Henry Liddell, held which post at Carroll's Oxford college?

Dean. As head of the college he could marry and live in, unlike its unmarried fellows, and Carroll's library office sat close to the family's house.

On 4 July 1862 Carroll first told the Alice story to the Liddell girls while doing what?

Rowing on the Thames. Alice begged him to write the tale down, and he spent more than two years turning it into a handwritten, illustrated book for her.

What was the title of the handwritten manuscript Carroll gave the Liddells' daughter in November 1864?

Alice's Adventures Under Ground. Alice Liddell sold it at auction in 1928, and American book lovers later bought it and gave it to Britain, where the British Library keeps it.

Whose children's delight in the Alice manuscript persuaded Carroll to seek a publisher?

George MacDonald's. The fairy-tale writer's wife read it to their children, and six-year-old Greville declared he wished there were 60,000 volumes of it.

Which publisher brought out Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865?

Macmillan. The first printing was pulled over poor print quality, and only about twenty of those copies are known to survive, making them some of the rarest Victorian books.

Who illustrated the first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

Sir John Tenniel. Carroll had drawn the pictures for his handwritten version himself, but decided a printed book needed a professional and hired the Punch cartoonist.

In a tale Carroll called 'utterly false', Queen Victoria asked for his next book and received what?

A mathematics treatise. The tale needs Alice's author and the Oxford mathematician to be openly one man, and he took great pains to keep the two apart in public.

In Through the Looking-Glass, which character explains the hard words of a nonsense poem to Alice?

Humpty Dumpty. He tells her 'slithy' is like a portmanteau, with two meanings packed into one word, and that is how blended words came to be called portmanteaus.

The Snark hunters include a Bellman, a Baker, a Butcher and which animal?

A beaver. It sits making lace and keeps well away from the Butcher, who can only kill beavers, until a shared fright turns the two into friends for life.

The poem that closes Through the Looking-Glass hides Alice Liddell's full name using which device?

An acrostic. The first letters of its 21 lines spell out Alice Pleasance Liddell, and he opened The Hunting of the Snark with the same trick for another child friend.

Carroll's last novel, a fairy tale in two volumes that never matched Alice's success, is called what?

Sylvie and Bruno. Its fairy scenes sit beside grown-up arguments about religion and politics, which his own nephew and biographer thought had scared off hundreds of readers.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, who keeps ordering 'Off with their heads'?

The Queen of Hearts. For all the shouting, nobody loses a head: the Gryphon tells Alice it is all her fancy and that they never execute anybody.

Which eminent Victorian sat for Carroll's camera in 1857?

Alfred Tennyson. A camera was Carroll's way into grand company: as a little-known young don he could still ask the Poet Laureate, Michael Faraday or Ellen Terry to sit for him.

At Wonderland's Mad Tea-Party, which sleepy animal sits between the Hatter and the March Hare?

The Dormouse. It dozes through most of the party, and the last thing Alice sees as she walks off is the other two trying to stuff it into the teapot.

Where at his Oxford college was Carroll's photographic studio?

On the roof of Tom Quad. Early plates needed strong daylight, which is also why he took so many of his portraits outdoors in the Liddells' garden.

Which word puzzle did Carroll invent in the 1870s?

The word ladder. You change one letter at a time, always leaving a real word, so CAT becomes DOG by way of COT and DOT, and he set them in a weekly column for two years.

In Wonderland's croquet game, what do the players have to use as mallets?

Flamingos. The balls are live hedgehogs and the hoops are soldiers bent double, and all three keep wandering off in the middle of the game.

What was the nyctograph, which Carroll invented?

A tablet for writing notes in the dark. It spared him getting up to strike a light when an idea woke him: he traced a code of dots and strokes through sixteen square holes in a card.

To encourage letter-writing, Carroll invented a Wonderland-themed case for holding what?

Postage stamps. He built in a trick: pull the folder out of its sleeve and the cover picture of Alice nursing the Duchess's baby turns into Alice holding a pig.

The register Carroll kept of every letter he wrote or received from 1861 reached roughly what total?

About 98,700. He summarised and numbered each letter and cross-referenced them so he could trace a whole exchange, and the last entry in the book is number 98,721.

An 1880 diary idea of Carroll's anticipated which board game?

Scrabble. He jotted down the idea of a game made of letters, moved about a squared board until they form words, about half a century before the real thing was invented.

In an 1895 dialogue on logic by Carroll, which animal traps Achilles in an endless argument?

A tortoise. Before it will accept an obvious conclusion it makes Achilles write down one more premise, then another, so the proof never ends; philosophers still argue over it.

In Carroll's poem 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', which creatures are lured along the beach and eaten?

Oysters. The Walrus sobs that he weeps for them while he eats, holding a handkerchief to his streaming eyes as he picks out the largest ones.

On 22 December 1861 Carroll was ordained as what in the Church of England?

A deacon. That was as far as he went: he never took priest's orders, yet he kept his college place for life, although its terms expected him to go on.

To which country did Carroll travel in 1867, on his only known trip abroad?

Russia. He went with his friend the Reverend Henry Liddon and kept a journal the whole way, but it stayed out of the bookshops until 1935.

In the trial that ends Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Knave is accused of stealing what?

Tarts. The charge is lifted straight from a nursery rhyme, and the trial falls apart when Alice, back to full size, tells the court they are nothing but a pack of cards.

Which Wonderland character does Alice chase as it frets about being late?

The White Rabbit. Alice thinks nothing of it talking to itself; what makes her jump up and run after it is seeing it pull a watch out of its waistcoat pocket.

Alice in Wonderland syndrome, linked to migraine, is named for which of Alice's experiences?

Changing size. Sufferers see things, or parts of their own body, as far too small or too large, and though Carroll recorded migraine auras of his own, there is no proof he ever had this kind.

Carroll wrote a whole book defending which ancient Greek's geometry textbook against its modern rivals?

Euclid. Carroll wrote the defence as a comic play in which Euclid's ghost appears and the Victorian textbooks trying to replace him are examined and dismissed one by one.

Which pre-Raphaelite painter's family did Carroll often photograph in Chelsea from 1863?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's. Carroll preferred the company of artists to any other set, and his camera got him into the garden where the painter posed with his mother, his brother and his sister Christina.

Where did Carroll die of pneumonia in January 1898?

His sisters' home in Guildford. He had gone to spend Christmas with them as he did every year, caught influenza, and died in the house less than two weeks before he turned 66.

In 1982 a memorial stone to Carroll was unveiled where?

Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The round stone is designed to suggest the hole Alice tumbles down, and a line from one of his poems circles it: 'Is all our Life, then, but a dream?'

After Wonderland's Caucus-race, who declares that everybody has won and all must have prizes?

The Dodo. The prizes come out of Alice's own pocket: she hands round her sweets, and is then solemnly presented with her own thimble as her reward.

In Through the Looking-Glass, Tweedledum and Tweedledee agree to fight a battle over what?

A broken rattle. The pair arm themselves with bolsters and coal-scuttles, then forget the whole quarrel and run when a monstrous crow darkens the sky, just as the nursery rhyme says.

The method named after Carroll's real surname picks the winner of what?

An election. He printed the idea in an 1876 pamphlet marked 'not yet published', and it was 1958 before an economist collected his voting pamphlets and published them.

Carroll was a member of which body founded to investigate ghosts and telepathy?

The Society for Psychical Research. He was a keen member for a time, and his curiosity about ghosts once sent him to call on an artist who had painted one he said he had seen.

In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice is offered a maid's job for twopence a week and what every other day?

Jam. The catch is the rule of 'jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but never jam to-day', which escaped the book to become a stock phrase for a reward always promised and never delivered.