Gertrude Chataway was the most important child-friend in the life of the author Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

, after Alice Liddell

Alice Liddell

Alice Pleasance Liddell , known for most of her adult life by her married name, Alice Hargreaves, inspired the children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, whose protagonist Alice is said to be named after her.-Biography:...

. It was Gertrude who inspired his great nonsense mock-epic The Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of the Snark is usually thought of as a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll in 1874, when he was 42 years old...

(1876), and the book is dedicated to her, and opens with a poem that uses her name as a double acrostic.

Carroll first became friends with Gertrude in 1875, when she was aged nine, while on holiday at the English seaside resort of Sandown

Sandown

Sandown is a seaside resort town and civil parish on the southeast coast of the Isle of Wight, England, neighbouring the town of Shanklin to the south. Sandown Bay is the name of the bay off the English Channel which both towns share, and it is notable for its long stretch of easily accessible...

. He made a number of pen and ink sketches of Gertrude as a young girl. He continued to correspond with her, and to spend numerous seaside holidays with her, including several when she was in her late twenties.

Further reading

• The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (Gutenberg e-book).