ABSTRACT
The suggestion that there may be a trialectic between sport, physical education and play is encouraged by the life and writing of one of the world’s most-read authors, Lewis Carroll, the nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898).2 He disliked organised sport; he took his own physical education seriously; and he loved childish playfulness. His most well known work, Alice in Wonderland, has run to numerous editions and has been translated into over seventy languages. In addition to Alice Dodgson penned Through the Looking Glass, a two-volume novel Sylvie and Bruno and numerous pamphlets, papers and poems. But first, some background: born in Daresbury, Cheshire, Dodgson/Carroll received his early education at Croft-on-Tees in North Yorkshire where his father held the position of rector and later chaplain to the Bishop of Ripon. Subsequently he attended Richmond Grammar School where he prepared for entry to the well known ‘public’ school at Rugby. In 1851 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, where he remained as a tutor in mathematics for the rest of his life.
