1. lewis carroll invented a method of writing in the dark.
Like many writers, Dodgson was frustrated by the loss of excellent ideas that were inconvenient to appear late at night, so he invented nyctograph at 189 1. This device is a card with 16 square holes (eight in two rows), which provides a guide for users to input shorthand codes of dots and dashes. Dodgson also thinks it is useful for the blind.
He suffered from stuttering for most of his life.
Dodgson had a difficult childhood. He stuttered when he was very young-he called it "hesitation". It accompanied his whole adult life and eventually became part of his personal fable-including the unconfirmed statement that he only stuttered in front of adults, but he had no problem talking to children. His childhood fever also made him deaf in one ear, and a whooping cough at the age of 17 weakened the rest of his life. In his later years, he suffered from a debilitating hallucination migraine, which was diagnosed as epilepsy by doctors at that time.
Carol is a dodo in Alice's Wonderland.
Dodgson provided the original story concept for Alice in Wonderland. At that time, he was boating with the children of the liddell family (his boss Henry liddell, dean of the Christian Church in Oxford) to commemorate the event of July 4th, 862/kloc-0. Book your own core group match. Alice is Alice Liddell, Lori is lorina liddell, Kitty Hawk is Edith liddell, Duck is colleague Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and Dodgson himself. The popular saying is that he uses this bird as his cartoon, because his stuttering makes him sometimes introduce himself as "Do-Do-Dodgson", but there is no evidence to support this statement.
4. Carol explained to Alice the source of his inspiration in the last chapter of "Flowers in the Mirror".
Throughout Dodgson's life, he denied that Alice was based on anyone in real life, but "A ship under a sunny sky", a poem ending through a mirror, is a clutch poem spelling Alice plesent Riddle.
He wrote 1 1 a math book.
As a logician, Dodgson's work in the fields of linear algebra, geometry and puzzles deserves attention. He has written nearly a dozen books, from the basic theory of determinant and its application in simultaneous linear equations and algebraic equations to logic games to committee and election theory. His interests and expertise are varied; He also wrote the first printed proof of Kroneck-Capelli theorem [PDF] and a better conceptual system represented by * * * *.
6. Alice's story may be a satire on non-Euclidean mathematics.
Dodgson is a conservative mathematician. He lives and works in an era when his discipline is undergoing great changes. In a column in * * * 2065 438+00, Melanie Bailey put forward a convincing case. Alice's adventure imitated an early conceptual mathematics characterized by imaginary numbers and quaternions, which Dodgson scoffed at. Cheshire cat may represent an increasingly abstract concept in this field, and the overall absurdity of fairyland may match the "absurdity" seen by traditional Dodgson in his disciplines.
7. Some people think that Carol is Jack the Ripper.
The list of people suspected to be Jack the Ripper is very long, and for some reason, the idea behind Alice is also on the list. The Ripper and Dodgson are contemporary; The murder happened in 1888, when Dodgson was in his fifties. Writer Richard Wallace speculated that Dodgson experienced strict religious education and potential bullying in an unhappy school year, and after his successful teaching and writing career, he grew up to be a serial murderer. Most of the theories originated from Wallace's reorganization of Dodgson's writing into "confessions". Although it is true that Dodgson buried the code and clues in his book, it is not just an extension of confusing random paragraphs into syntactically embarrassing statements about killings.
He is a versatile photographer.
Since his twenties, Dodgson has created more than 3,000 photographic images, including portraits of friends and celebrities (such as Alfred and Lord Tennyson), still images of landscapes and bones, dolls, statues and paintings. According to lewis carroll's biography and Morton N Cohen's artist biography, Dodgson has his own studio, which was briefly considered in the1850s.
Carol is a lifelong bachelor, which caused some speculation about his romantic interest.
Dodgson's photographic works have always been the center of modern reflection on Dodgson's sexual orientation. The author is a lifelong bachelor, and 50% of his photos are depicting young girls, including alice carroll, and several nude photos of girls. One of the most famous is the portrait of Beatrice Hatch, the daughter of a colleague at Oxford University. Dodgson's personal relationship is little known, which has aroused people's speculation-especially Cohen-that he has romantic feelings for Alice, who is 1 1. However, the writer Caroline Leach hinted that it is a myth to redefine Dodgson as a pedophile, which stems from ignorance of Victorian morality and the popularity of nude children in the art world. Dodgson's family concealed the information about the relationship between writers and adult women.
10. Carol may be one of the inspirations of the novel Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov, who translated Alice in Wonderland into Russian, once called Carol "lewis carroll Carroll because he was the first Humbert Humbert". Nabokov's suspicions focused on Carol's photos.
He became a deacon, but never a priest.
Horton Archives/Getty Images, lewis carroll.
Most of Dodgson's life aroused people's speculation, including his refusal to become a priest, which ran counter to the rules of the Christian church during his stay there. He was appointed deacon on186165438+February 22nd, but he had to ask Dean liddell to avoid becoming a priest. Similarly, his stuttering seems to be a possible explanation for his refusal to become a priest, but there is no evidence that it may hinder his ability to preach. Other possible reasons include love of drama (opposed by the Bishop of Oxford), tepid interest in the Anglican Church, and growing interest in alternative religions.