Bookmarks will have books for sale during the event and the audience is also welcome to purchase Lewis Carroll: Formed by Faith online prior to the event.

University of Virginia Press (release date: September 20, 2022): For Lewis Carroll, a deacon in the Church of England, faith in Christ and belief in a loving God stood at the core of his being, but little has been written about what the church or faith meant to the celebrated author of the Alice books. With Lewis Carroll: Formed by Faith, Charlie Lovett provides the first in-depth study of the religious life of the famous author, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

By examining Dodgson’s religious education and core beliefs, this book shows how a deep Christian faith undergirded and guided every part of his life and work, from his relationships with children to his renowned writings, his work on logic, even his hobbies of photography and theatre-going. The book includes a detailed account of the career of Dodgson’s father—an important figure in the Anglican church and a key influence on his son.

Family records give insight into Charles’s early education, and newly discovered manuscript materials paint a full picture of his religious education at Richmond and Rugby Schools. Lovett finds previously unknown influences in Dodgson’s life, analyzes his habits of preaching and prayer, explores his training for confirmation and ordination, analyzes his reasons for eschewing the priesthood, and concludes with an account of his death and funeral and his logically constructed theology of the afterlife. The book makes use of previously untapped sources and highlights new material, including a previously unknown sermon by Dodgson, the first ever discovered. The result is a major contribution offering new perspectives on this creator of fantastical fiction and the spiritual bedrock that informed his life and imagination.

Charlie Lovett was born in Winston-Salem, NC, and grew up as the child of a book-collecting English professor. His break-through as a fiction writer came with the Shakespearean mystery The Bookman’s Tale (Viking/Penguin, 2013), a New York Times bestseller. He has served as the president of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, as editor of the London based Lewis Carroll Review, and has lectured on Carroll in the US and Europe. Lovett has written or edited nine books about Lewis Carroll, including Lewis Carroll: Formed by Faith, the first full length study of Carroll’s religious life (UVA Press, 2022).

Mark Goodacre is the Frances Hill Fox Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, North Carolina, USA. He earned his MA, M.Phil and DPhil at the University of Oxford. His research interests include the Gospels, the Apocryphal New Testament, and the Historical Jesus. Goodacre is the author of four books including The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002) and Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). Goodacre is currently working on a book on John’s knowledge of the Synoptic Gospels.