Children through the decades: Lewis Carroll and his girls

“Children Through the Decades” examines the evolutions in Lewis Carroll’s girl-child relationships by charting out data collected from his diaries and letters. The paper discusses not only the changes in his friends’ ages, but the changes in how he met his friends, where he met his friends, when he met his friends, and what activities he enjoyed with his friends. This is achieved by taking five three-year snapshots of his life at ten year intervals: 1855-57, 1865-67, 1875-77, 1885-87, and 1895-97. Each of the five snapshots begins with a short biographical sketch of his life at the time, followed by a discussion of his girl-child relationships, highlighting, for example, his favorite girls or emphasizing a particular recurring theme for the period. Each snapshot concludes with a discussion of a numeric chart built from a comprehensive reading of Carroll’s diaries and letters. Being comprehensive, the five resulting charts for each snapshot are designed to keep the researcher free from bias. The paper finds that the most dramatic change occurred between the third and fourth snapshots, and thus concludes with a further examination of those years.