Few writers of fantasy have managed to permeate their own cultures as did Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician and amateur photographer who wrote children's books under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. Along with memorable characters who have taken on lives beyond their fictional sources such as King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Frankensteins monster, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes, among others are such Carroll creations as the Mad Hatter, the Red Queen, and of course Alice. People who have never read either of Carroll's best-known books are nonetheless somewhat familiar with the adventures of the little girl who fell down a rabbit hole and passed through a looking glass and found curiouser and curiouser things.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born on 27 January 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, the oldest son of the Reverend Charles Dodgson and Frances Jane Lutwidge Dodgson. He was the...