Lewis Carroll
Spine number 01
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Following a White Rabbit down a hole, Alice finds that her size, her schoolroom knowledge and the rules of polite conversation can no longer be trusted. Encounters with disputatious animals and imperious royalty turn a child’s attempt to make sense of things into a comedy of language. The first printing was withdrawn in 1865 over the quality of the illustrations; a replacement appeared that year with an 1866 title page.
1865 · book · Fiction
Spine number 02
Phantasmagoria and Other Poems
A visiting ghost explains the practical business of haunting to an unexpectedly argumentative host in the collection’s opening poem. Comic narratives and parodies sit beside serious poems about love, loss and faith, giving this original volume a mixture of invented scenes and reflective verse. Carroll later redistributed much of its contents between Rhyme? and Reason? and Three Sunsets and Other Poems.
1869 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 03
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
Alice steps through a mirror into a world arranged like a chessboard, where progress brings meetings with contrary queens, talking flowers and Humpty Dumpty. Poems and arguments test how far words can be stretched before sense gives way. The sequel was issued in December 1871, although its title page is dated 1872.
1871 · book · Fiction
Spine number 04
The Hunting of the Snark
A Bellman leads an ill-assorted company on an expedition to find a creature whose nature remains alarmingly uncertain. Their preparations, quarrels and methods of hunting turn the heroic quest into a brisk nonsense poem with an undertow of unease. First published with illustrations by Henry Holiday, it unfolds in eight sections called fits.
1876 · poem · Fiction
Spine number 05
Euclid and His Modern Rivals
A sleeping examiner receives visitors who put competing geometry textbooks on trial. Dodgson uses dramatic dialogue to defend Euclid’s sequence of definitions and proofs while exposing what he considers the weaknesses of alternative approaches. Despite its invented speakers, the work is an argument about mathematical teaching and is classified here as nonfiction.
1879 · play · Non-fiction
Spine number 06
Doublets
Change one letter at a time to turn one word into another, keeping every intermediate step a word in its own right. Carroll presents the rules, examples and challenges of a game that makes vocabulary a matter of route-finding. The book followed the game’s appearance in Vanity Fair in 1879.
1879 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 07
Rhyme? and Reason?
Ghosts, absurd lovers and the Snark-hunting expedition share a volume of narrative verse, parody and verbal puzzles. Its quick changes of speaker and scale make it suited to dipping into, with longer comic set pieces alongside brief pieces. Published in 1883, the collection brings together the comic portion of Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, The Hunting of the Snark and additional poems.
1883 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 08
A Tangled Tale
Travellers, students and other comic figures encounter situations that turn into questions of arithmetic, algebra and geometry. Each narrative knot asks readers to stop and work something out; the substantial answer section explains solutions and discusses attempts sent in by readers. The 1885 book collects material serialised in The Monthly Packet from 1880, combining fiction with mathematical instruction.
1885 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 09
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
This shorter early version of Alice’s journey follows her underground before the story acquired all the episodes familiar from Wonderland. Carroll’s own drawings and handwritten pages make the book an encounter with the tale as a personal gift. Written in 1862–1863 and presented to Alice Liddell in 1864, the manuscript first reached the public as a facsimile in 1886.
1886 · book · Fiction
Spine number 10
The Game of Logic
A diagram and coloured counters turn statements about classes of things into a game of placing information and testing conclusions. Playful examples introduce propositions, syllogisms and fallacies, followed by exercises and answers. This record uses the first published edition of 1887; Carroll had rejected an earlier printing dated 1886, of which some copies survive.
1887 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 11
A New Theory of Parallels
Dodgson returns to the foundations of geometry, examining the problem of parallel lines through definitions and propositions. The argument asks for sustained attention to diagrams and proof, making it a more technical companion to his popular puzzles. It appeared as the first part of Curiosa Mathematica under his own name.
1888 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 12
Sylvie and Bruno
A narrator moves between an English social world and the adventures of the fairy children Sylvie and Bruno. Comic dialogue, songs and changes in the level of reality interrupt a story concerned with affection, duty and belief. This is the first of two separately published volumes, followed by Sylvie and Bruno Concluded in 1893.
1889 · book · Fiction
Spine number 13
The Nursery “Alice”
Carroll retells selected Wonderland adventures in a conversational voice for very young children, repeatedly drawing attention to what can be seen in the pictures. Enlarged colour versions of John Tenniel’s illustrations become part of the storytelling. The published edition appeared in 1890 after an earlier printing had been rejected.
1890 · book · Fiction
Spine number 14
Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing
Carroll treats correspondence as both a practical system and a relationship between people who can easily misunderstand one another. Advice on legibility, answering questions and avoiding quarrels sits beside instructions for organising letters and stamps. Published with his Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case, the pamphlet gives everyday orderliness a characteristically playful voice.
1890 · pamphlet · Non-fiction
Spine number 15
Pillow Problems
Seventy-two mathematical questions invite readers to follow the calculations Carroll worked through mentally during wakeful nights. Problems, answers and methods are presented as a record of thinking under unusual constraints. Published as the second part of Curiosa Mathematica, the volume ranges across arithmetic, algebra, geometry and probability.
1893 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 16
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
The fairy children and their adult companions return as the narrative moves again between everyday society and impossible happenings. Wordplay, songs and moral reflection continue to interrupt the boundaries between its worlds. Published four years after Sylvie and Bruno, this second volume completes the two-part work and is best approached after the first.
1893 · book · Fiction
Spine number 17
Symbolic Logic: Part I, Elementary
Carroll guides readers from the analysis of statements to the solution of increasingly elaborate logical problems. His eccentric examples make the work lively, but the sequence is cumulative and rewards trying the exercises before looking ahead. This entry represents the completed elementary volume published in 1896, rather than the larger projected series whose later parts remained unpublished during his lifetime.
1896 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 18
Three Sunsets and Other Poems
Love, separation, faith and remembered childhood take the foreground in this quieter collection. Dramatic narratives appear alongside devotional and reflective verse, accounting for its mixed classification. Published after Carroll’s death with illustrations by E. Gertrude Thomson, the volume gathers earlier poems, including serious verse from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, with later additions.
1898 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction · Posthumous
Spine number 19
Feeding the Mind
Carroll compares reading with eating, asking how the mind can digest what it takes in rather than merely accumulate more. The brief essay considers selection, moderation and the value of pausing to think. First published in 1907, it preserves a lecture delivered in 1884.
1907 · essay · Non-fiction · Posthumous
Start with Alice’s encounters in Wonderland, or approach Carroll through nonsense verse or mathematical puzzles. His books reward attention to the exact words people use, even when their worlds seem to follow no rules at all.
Where to begin
Start here
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Alice’s questions provide a steady thread through the changing scenes, making this an inviting introduction to Carroll’s comic reasoning. Read the dialogue closely: much of the pleasure comes from hearing a familiar expression taken literally or an apparently sensible rule pushed too far.
Not yet in our collection
For a shorter journey
The Hunting of the Snark
Choose this narrative poem for a concentrated encounter with Carroll’s rhythms, invented language and uneasy comedy. Reading it aloud brings out the momentum; the expedition is enjoyable without treating every creature as a puzzle with a single solution.
Not yet in our collection
For readers who enjoy puzzles
A Tangled Tale
These short episodes bring Carroll’s storytelling and mathematical teaching into the same room. Have paper to hand and try one knot at a time: the explanations are part of the experience, but the book asks for more active calculation than the Alice stories.
Not yet in our collection
Read next
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
Follow Wonderland with a world whose chessboard gives Alice a more visible route while making conversation no less slippery. The poems, mirror reversals and disputes about meaning extend the first book’s pleasures in a different pattern.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1865
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
book
Following a White Rabbit down a hole, Alice finds that her size, her schoolroom knowledge and the rules of polite conversation can no longer be trusted. Encounters with disputatious animals and imperious royalty turn a child’s attempt to make sense of things into a comedy of language. The first printing was withdrawn in 1865 over the quality of the illustrations; a replacement appeared that year with an 1866 title page.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1869
Phantasmagoria and Other Poems
collection
A visiting ghost explains the practical business of haunting to an unexpectedly argumentative host in the collection’s opening poem. Comic narratives and parodies sit beside serious poems about love, loss and faith, giving this original volume a mixture of invented scenes and reflective verse. Carroll later redistributed much of its contents between Rhyme? and Reason? and Three Sunsets and Other Poems.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1871
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
book
Alice steps through a mirror into a world arranged like a chessboard, where progress brings meetings with contrary queens, talking flowers and Humpty Dumpty. Poems and arguments test how far words can be stretched before sense gives way. The sequel was issued in December 1871, although its title page is dated 1872.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1876
The Hunting of the Snark
poem
A Bellman leads an ill-assorted company on an expedition to find a creature whose nature remains alarmingly uncertain. Their preparations, quarrels and methods of hunting turn the heroic quest into a brisk nonsense poem with an undertow of unease. First published with illustrations by Henry Holiday, it unfolds in eight sections called fits.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1879
Doublets
book
Change one letter at a time to turn one word into another, keeping every intermediate step a word in its own right. Carroll presents the rules, examples and challenges of a game that makes vocabulary a matter of route-finding. The book followed the game’s appearance in Vanity Fair in 1879.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1879
Euclid and His Modern Rivals
play
A sleeping examiner receives visitors who put competing geometry textbooks on trial. Dodgson uses dramatic dialogue to defend Euclid’s sequence of definitions and proofs while exposing what he considers the weaknesses of alternative approaches. Despite its invented speakers, the work is an argument about mathematical teaching and is classified here as nonfiction.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1883
Rhyme? and Reason?
collection
Ghosts, absurd lovers and the Snark-hunting expedition share a volume of narrative verse, parody and verbal puzzles. Its quick changes of speaker and scale make it suited to dipping into, with longer comic set pieces alongside brief pieces. Published in 1883, the collection brings together the comic portion of Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, The Hunting of the Snark and additional poems.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1885
A Tangled Tale
collection
Travellers, students and other comic figures encounter situations that turn into questions of arithmetic, algebra and geometry. Each narrative knot asks readers to stop and work something out; the substantial answer section explains solutions and discusses attempts sent in by readers. The 1885 book collects material serialised in The Monthly Packet from 1880, combining fiction with mathematical instruction.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1886
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
book
This shorter early version of Alice’s journey follows her underground before the story acquired all the episodes familiar from Wonderland. Carroll’s own drawings and handwritten pages make the book an encounter with the tale as a personal gift. Written in 1862–1863 and presented to Alice Liddell in 1864, the manuscript first reached the public as a facsimile in 1886.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1887
The Game of Logic
book
A diagram and coloured counters turn statements about classes of things into a game of placing information and testing conclusions. Playful examples introduce propositions, syllogisms and fallacies, followed by exercises and answers. This record uses the first published edition of 1887; Carroll had rejected an earlier printing dated 1886, of which some copies survive.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1888
A New Theory of Parallels
book
Dodgson returns to the foundations of geometry, examining the problem of parallel lines through definitions and propositions. The argument asks for sustained attention to diagrams and proof, making it a more technical companion to his popular puzzles. It appeared as the first part of Curiosa Mathematica under his own name.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1889
Sylvie and Bruno
book
A narrator moves between an English social world and the adventures of the fairy children Sylvie and Bruno. Comic dialogue, songs and changes in the level of reality interrupt a story concerned with affection, duty and belief. This is the first of two separately published volumes, followed by Sylvie and Bruno Concluded in 1893.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1890
Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing
pamphlet
Carroll treats correspondence as both a practical system and a relationship between people who can easily misunderstand one another. Advice on legibility, answering questions and avoiding quarrels sits beside instructions for organising letters and stamps. Published with his Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case, the pamphlet gives everyday orderliness a characteristically playful voice.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1890
The Nursery “Alice”
book
Carroll retells selected Wonderland adventures in a conversational voice for very young children, repeatedly drawing attention to what can be seen in the pictures. Enlarged colour versions of John Tenniel’s illustrations become part of the storytelling. The published edition appeared in 1890 after an earlier printing had been rejected.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1893
Pillow Problems
book
Seventy-two mathematical questions invite readers to follow the calculations Carroll worked through mentally during wakeful nights. Problems, answers and methods are presented as a record of thinking under unusual constraints. Published as the second part of Curiosa Mathematica, the volume ranges across arithmetic, algebra, geometry and probability.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1893
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
book
The fairy children and their adult companions return as the narrative moves again between everyday society and impossible happenings. Wordplay, songs and moral reflection continue to interrupt the boundaries between its worlds. Published four years after Sylvie and Bruno, this second volume completes the two-part work and is best approached after the first.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1896
Symbolic Logic: Part I, Elementary
book
Carroll guides readers from the analysis of statements to the solution of increasingly elaborate logical problems. His eccentric examples make the work lively, but the sequence is cumulative and rewards trying the exercises before looking ahead. This entry represents the completed elementary volume published in 1896, rather than the larger projected series whose later parts remained unpublished during his lifetime.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1898
Three Sunsets and Other Poems
collection · Posthumous
Love, separation, faith and remembered childhood take the foreground in this quieter collection. Dramatic narratives appear alongside devotional and reflective verse, accounting for its mixed classification. Published after Carroll’s death with illustrations by E. Gertrude Thomson, the volume gathers earlier poems, including serious verse from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, with later additions.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1907
Feeding the Mind
essay · Posthumous
Carroll compares reading with eating, asking how the mind can digest what it takes in rather than merely accumulate more. The brief essay considers selection, moderation and the value of pausing to think. First published in 1907, it preserves a lecture delivered in 1884.
Not yet in our collection
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an English writer, mathematician and photographer. His Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) follow a questioning child into worlds where ordinary language, manners and rules become unreliable. Their conversations, parodies and invented creatures make nonsense out of familiar habits of thought, while Alice tries to hold her own against the people who claim to know better.
Born at Daresbury in Cheshire on 27 January 1832, Dodgson spent most of his adult life at Christ Church, Oxford, where he taught mathematics. The Alice stories grew from storytelling for the Liddell children, including a river outing in July 1862. He developed the tale into an illustrated manuscript for Alice Liddell and expanded it for publication. Alongside his fiction he wrote about geometry and logic, and devised games and puzzles.
His other writing includes the mock-heroic poem The Hunting of the Snark (1876), the mathematical stories of A Tangled Tale (1885), and the two volumes of Sylvie and Bruno (1889 and 1893), which move between fairyland and Victorian society. He died at Guildford on 14 January 1898. His work ranges from comic invention to religious and reflective verse, with a recurring interest in what words and arguments can make us believe.