Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford and an Anglican clergyman. As a respite from the demands of university life he explored the world of his imagination with light-hearted writing, and adopted the name Lewis Carroll (by which he is referred to in this article). He was also an enthusiast for the relatively new technology of photography, becoming 'an amateur master of the medium'. He approached it 'with gusto' and it became his social link, satisfying his need to feel accepted.1
From 1856 to 1880 Carroll made approximately 3000 photographs, although fewer than 1000 have survived. His subjects included landscapes, still-lifes and portraits of his family, friends and such wellknown Victorians as painter John Everett Millais, poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, art critic and watercolourist John Ruskin, and fellow photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.2 A bachelor, Carroll became 'a sort of uncle' to the daughters of his colleague Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church.3 In July 1862 he took ten-year-old Alice Liddell and two of her sisters boating on the Thames near Oxford, and told them a story. At Alice's request he wrote it down; it was published in 1865 as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and became arguably the most famous book in English children's literature.
Prior to prompting his writing, Alice Liddell had posed for Carroll's camera. One such image, 'Beggar Maid', probably drew on Tennyson's 1842 poem of the same name, and It is ironic that while such subjects were then considered acceptably artistic, large numbers of child beggars were sleeping rough on the streets of Britain. Carroll, along with other contemporary photographers, favoured sentimental genre studies, the narrative tableau vivant and portraits with a strong theatrical or emotional element. Julia Margaret Cameron, for example, made images of children immortalised as angels, spirits and visions of innocence.
