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50 free Lewis Carroll trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Lewis Carroll trivia quiz is about Charles Lutwidge Dodgson himself rather than the plot of Alice: the Cheshire vicarage he was born in, the stammer he called his 'hesitation', the Oxford college he never left, the boat trip up the Thames on 4 July 1862 and the way his pen name was built out of Latin. The easy questions cover the real name, the two Alice books, the illustrator, the college and the little girl who begged him to write the story down. The harder end covers the rejected pseudonyms Edgar Cuthwellis and Louis Carroll, the puzzle he sold to Vanity Fair, the nyctograph for writing in the dark, the stamp case, the roof-top photographic studio, the sitters from Tennyson to Faraday, the only foreign trip he ever made, the mathematics published under his real name, the missing diary pages and the Queen Victoria story he called 'utterly false in every particular'. Every answer was checked against Carroll's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. For the books themselves, our Alice in Wonderland quiz is the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Lewis Carroll's real name?
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
He was a mathematician, photographer and Anglican clergyman as well as an author.
Q 02In which English county was Carroll born, at All Saints' Vicarage in Daresbury?
Cheshire
The church there now has stained-glass windows of Alice characters and a Lewis Carroll Centre opened beside it in 2012.
Q 03How many children were in Carroll's family?
11
He was the eldest boy and third eldest child; most of his siblings shared his speech impediment.
Q 04Which famous public school did Carroll attend from 1846, and dislike intensely?
Rugby
He said no earthly consideration would make him go through the three years again, though his mathematics master called him the most promising boy he had taught.
Q 05What Latin inscription did the young Carroll write in his arithmetic textbook?
'This book belongs to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: hands off!'
Beside one problem he scribbled 'Not a fair question in decimals'.
Q 06At which Oxford college did Carroll study, teach and live for the rest of his life?
Christ Church
It was his father's old college; he arrived in January 1851 and was summoned home two days later by his mother's death.
Q 07Which subject did Carroll lecture in at his Oxford college for 26 years from 1855?
Mathematics
He had graduated top of the list in the Final Honours School of Mathematics in 1854.
Q 08Which speech impediment did Carroll have, and refer to as his 'hesitation'?
A stammer
He is said to have caricatured himself as the Dodo, from his difficulty saying 'Do-do-dodgson', though no first-hand evidence for that survives.
Q 09A childhood fever left Carroll with which lasting disability?
Deafness in one ear
At 17 a bout of whooping cough probably caused the weak chest that dogged him in later life.
Q 10How was the pen name 'Lewis Carroll' constructed?
His first names Latinised, re-Englished and reversed
Charles Lutwidge became Carolus Ludovicus, then Carroll Lewis, then Lewis Carroll.
Q 11Which of these was one of the rejected pen names Carroll offered his editor alongside 'Lewis Carroll'?
Edgar Cuthwellis
Editor Edmund Yates chose from four options; the others were Edgar U. C. Westhill and Louis Carroll.
Q 12What was the first work published under the name Lewis Carroll, in March 1856?
A romantic poem called 'Solitude'
It appeared in the magazine The Train, nine years before Alice.
Q 13Alice Liddell was the daughter of Henry Liddell, who held what post?
Dean of Christ Church
Q 21The Hunting of the Snark follows a crew of nine tradesmen and which animal?
A beaver
One famous pre-Raphaelite painter reputedly became convinced the poem was about him.
Q 22Whose name is spelled out by the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass?
Alice Pleasance Liddell
Gertrude Chataway got the same treatment at the start of The Hunting of the Snark.
Q 23Carroll's late two-volume fairy tale, published in 1889 and 1893 and a comparative flop, is called what?
Sylvie and Bruno
Its 'babytalk' baffled readers and it sold only 13,000 copies.
Liddell arrived in 1856 with his family; Carroll's sub-librarian's office was close to the deanery.
Q 14On what date did Carroll invent the outline of Alice during a rowing trip with the Liddell children?
4 July 1862
The trips went to Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow; Alice begged him to write the story down.
Q 15What was the title of the handwritten manuscript Carroll gave the Liddells' daughter in November 1864?
Alice's Adventures Under Ground
Alice Among the Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour were rejected as titles for the published book.
Q 16Whose children's enthusiasm for the manuscript persuaded Carroll to seek publication?
George MacDonald's
MacDonald was a fairy-tale author and Carroll's friend and mentor.
Q 17Which publisher took the unfinished Alice manuscript in 1863 and 'liked it immediately'?
Macmillan
The expanded book came out in 1865 under the pen name he had first used nine years earlier.
Q 18Who illustrated the published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?
Sir John Tenniel
Carroll had drawn the manuscript himself but decided a real book needed a professional; Henry Holiday later illustrated the Snark.
Q 19Which monarch, in a story Carroll called 'utterly false', demanded his next book and got a treatise on determinants?
Queen Victoria
He never publicly linked the author of Alice with the mathematician Dodgson, which makes the tale even less likely.
Q 20What year is erroneously printed on the title page of the first edition of Through the Looking-Glass?
1872
It actually appeared late in 1871; its darker mood may reflect his depression after his father's death in 1868.
Q 24Which art form did Carroll take up in 1856 and practise for 24 years, becoming an amateur master?
Photography
He built his own studio at the college and made around 3,000 images, of which fewer than 1,000 survive.
Q 25Which of these was among Carroll's notable photographic sitters?
Alfred Tennyson
Others included Michael Faraday, Ellen Terry, Millais and Lord Salisbury.
Q 26Which photographic process kept Carroll slower than rivals who adopted dry plates in the 1870s?
Wet collodion
He gave up photography abruptly in 1880 because keeping the studio going took too much time.
Q 27Where at his Oxford college was Carroll's photographic studio?
On the roof of Tom Quad
Many of his pictures of children were taken in the Liddell garden because good exposures needed sunlight.
Q 28Which still-popular puzzle did Carroll invent in 1878, transforming CAT into DOG one letter at a time?
The word ladder
He wrote a weekly column of them for Vanity Fair from 1879 to 1881; CAT to DOG goes CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.
Q 29Under what name did Carroll's letter-changing puzzle run in Vanity Fair?
Doublets
The first appeared on 29 March 1879 and the last column on 9 April 1881.
Q 30What was the nyctograph, which Carroll invented?
A tablet for writing notes in the dark
It used a gridded card of sixteen squares and a symbol alphabet, so he need not get up and light a candle when an idea struck.