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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Lewis Carroll
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(pen name of Charles Dodgson, 1832–98) Author of two of the world's best-known children's books. He taught mathematics at Christ Church, *Oxford, where he became friendly with the three young daughters of the dean, Henry Liddell, and in particular with Alice. He was a keen photographer and began telling stories to the children to keep them amused while he was taking their pictures. On a boating trip up the Thames, on 4 July 1862, when Alice was ten, he improvised for them a fantasy called Alice's Adventures under Ground and promised to write it out.
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He did so, with his own illustrations (the manuscript is now in the British Library), and it was published in 1865 as *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Seven years later came *Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll was to produce one more masterpiece of nonsense, The *Hunting of the Snark (1876). His photographs of young girls, occasionally nude, have given him a second reputation of lasting interest, both for the beauty of the photographs and for the psychological aspect of his long succession of child-friends (though none ever matched his feeling for Alice).
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