Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better know by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was born in 1832. Among other works, he was the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass; and the whimsical poem "Jabberwocky." Carroll was also an Anglican deacon, mathematician, photographer, and inventor. Carroll came from a family of conservative, high-church Anglicans. Most of his male ancestors were Church of England clergy or army officers. He spent much of his life as a scholar and teacher at Christ Church, Oxford. As a young boy, Carroll was educated at home. Like most of his siblings, he spoke with a stammer, which inhibited him socially throughout his life. He started writing poetry and short stories at a young age, contributing to the family magazine Mischmasch and later to other magazines. In his early 20s, Carroll's work was published in such national magazines as The Comic Times and The Train and in smaller publications such as the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865 under his pen name of Lewis Carroll, which Dodgson had started using almost a decade earlier. The book was a huge commercial success, and he became famous as Lewis Carroll all over the world. As a result, Carroll received voluminous fan mail and a good deal of attention that he didn't particularly want. Late in 1871, Carroll published the sequel to the first Alice book, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. It was a darker book than the first title, possibly due to Carroll's depression brought on in part by his father's death in 1868.Dodgson died of pneumonia in 1898 at his sisters' home in Guildford, Surrey, two weeks before his 66th birthday. He is commemorated at All Saints' Church in Daresbury, where the stained glass windows depict characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In 1982, a memorial stone to Carroll was unveiled at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
