SOURCE: Cohen, Morton N. “Lewis Carroll and the Education of Victorian Women.” In Nineteenth-Century Women Writers of the English-Speaking World, edited by Rhoda B. Nathan, pp. 27-35. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

In the following essay, originally published in 1984, Cohen discusses Dodgson's views on higher education for women and his personal contributions to the education of women and girls in mathematics and formal logic.

We are all aware that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, nurtured all his mature life a special preference for the female of the species. The preference was special because it was a preference not for all females, but for young girls. Even in Victorian times—some would say particularly in Victorian times—the idea of an unmarried Oxford don, however respectable, pursuing friendships with pre-pubescent girls offended some sensibilities.

But now, more than three quarters of a century after Dodgson's death, when...