Alice is quite an ordinary young girl; she comes from a wealthy family, has an older sister, lives in England – therefore having traits an average main character does. What most people don’t realize however is that Alice is based off of a real girl in Carroll’s life. The story was written while on a boat ride with the Liddell family (Smith 5). Henry Liddell was the Dean of Christ Church, where Carroll attended the majority of his schooling; at the time Liddell was appointed, his daughter Alice was three years old (Smith 5). Carroll was quite known for having kinship like friendships with several young girls – which he claimed were all harmless. He claimed to be “Out of (his) element altogether” when it came to young boys, even though he recalled …show more content…
Born January 27, 1832, he was the son of Charles Dodgson, an archdeacon, and Frances Jane Lutwidge. The family consisted of eleven kids, Lewis being the third born. He lived a quiet, secluded life— and according to his nephew Stuart Dodgson Collingwood befriended things such as “certain snails and toads (were) among his intimate friends” (“Lewis Carroll” 1). Carroll began to write at quite a young age, writing his first family magazine in 1845 when he was just 13 years old. Mr. Tate, his writing instructor, commented that Carroll as a child was given “creativity in replacing the inflexions of nouns and verbs, as detailed in our grammars”, which Mr. Tate promised his family he would eventually outgrow. Several of his works are known to be interpretations of his life; his poem “My Fairy” representing a persona of an adult character who acts as sort of a guardian angel. Another of his works, “Rules and Regulations”, commented on stammering, a problem Carroll faced most of his life due to his shyness. Many of his other works also contained information from his life, but those two are the most prominent. In 1846, when Dodgson was fourteen, he was sent to Rugby—a school he attended until December 1849, where he grew academically to fit his families standards of him. In May of 1850 Dodgson enrolled at Christ Church in Oxford, England; he was associated with this university for the rest of his life. His relationship with this college eventually introduced Carroll to Alice Liddell, the future lead of his best-selling novel. The university supported him well, awarding him the Boulter Scholarship which awarded him £20 a year. In 1852, he earned a studentship which gave him £25 a year, and eventually in 1856 he received his masters, being appointed as a tutor in 1857 with the salary of £300 a year (“Lewis Carroll” 4). On December 22, 1861 he received one of the biggest honors of his life, being ordained as a member of the clergy for