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Rare Books and Manuscripts
Collection 293
G. EDWARD CASSADY, M.D. AND MARGARET ELIZABETH CASSADY, R.N.
LEWIS CARROLL COLLECTION
Provenance:
This collection of work by Lewis Carroll (born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was given to USC in 2000 by George Cassady, M.D. in honor of his parents.
Scope/Content:
The collection began with 95 books and 20 pieces of ephemera, and is being actively developed. It includes such items as a first issue of Through the Looking Glass from 1872, a sound recording of "Alice" with John Gielgud, Victorian-era playing cards based on the Tenniel illustrations.Biography:
Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898) is the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Lewis Carroll is derived from the reversed and transmogrified Christian names: Lutwidge -- Ludovicus -- Lewis and Charles -- Carolus -- Carroll.Dodgson was the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Richmond School in Yorkshire, Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1854 and obtained his master of arts degree in 1857, and where he spent the rest of his life. From 1855 to 1881 he was a mathematical lecturer at Oxford, where he was a somewhat eccentric and withdrawn character. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1861 but never practiced his ministry. His most famous book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), developed from a story he told one afternoon to the three daughters of the Greek scholar H. G. Liddell, Dean of Christ Church. Alice, named after one of them, continued her adventures in Through the Looking-Glass (1871). In 1869 he published Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, an entertaining collection comprising thirteen humorous poems and thirteen serious ones; in 1876 a long nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark appeared; in 1885 came A Tangled Tale, designed to interest children in mathematics; 1889 saw the publication of the fairy story Sylvie and Bruno and its sequel Sylvie and Bruno Concluded was published in 1893. His writings also include articles and books on geometry, determinants, and the mathematics of tournaments and elections. Dodgson was an inventor of puzzles, games, ciphers, and mnemonics, and an amateur pioneer in photography. He never married, and was most comfortable when with children, especially little girls in whose company his usual stammer completely disappeared. Dodgson died at Guilford, Surrey, on January 14, 1898 of influenza, 2 weeks before his 66th birthday. His memory is appropriately kept alive by perpetual public endowment of a cot in the Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street, London.
