The Sporting World of Lewis Carroll

2017 | Essays

Charles Dodgson (or Lewis Carroll as he was usually known) lived through a period of rapid change. The Victorian era witnessed the new world of 'the modern', the speeding up of society, and the rationalisation of day to day life. Caught up in the whirlwind changes brought about by modernity was the rapidly growing and changing world of sport. Contesting the conventional view that Dodgson had little to do with sport, this book instead demonstrates that he engaged with sport in a variety of ways: he was a passive observer of a number of popular sports; he was somewhat of a political activist with regards 'blood sports' and hunting; he adopted sporting habits himself through his enthusiasm for walking, croquet and rowing; and perhaps most famously, he turned aspects of modern sports upside down through his allusion to running and croquet in his 'nonsense' books. These sporting engagements reveal the permeability of sport in the Victorian period, the ways in which it appealed in unlikely contexts, and the equally unlikely willingness of writers such as Dodgson to engage with it.

This study adopts a fresh and innovative approach to the history of sport and of a sporting culture in Victorian Britain and will be of interest to cultural, literary, sports and university historians alike.

John Bale (Author)