Charles Dodgson was the oldest of eleven children in a parish priest 's family. Every member of the Dodgson family stammered including Charles, who was also intensely shy, but these impediments did not hinder him from developing a talent for mathematics. Charles was enrolled at Christ Church, Oxford in 1850 and received his bachelor 's degree in 1854 after studying mathematics and classics. He taught mathematics and was ordained a deacon in the Church of England although he never became a priest.

Dodgson was uncomfortable in the company of adults, and he never married. His complex and, in the view of some modern scholars, controversial friendships with the children of his many friends inspired Dodgson to write under the nom de plume he had used previously as a writer of verse-- Lewis Carroll. The books he wrote for one girl, Alice Liddell, were Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the...