On March 1, 1856, Lewis Carroll was born—at least in print. On that date, mathematics scholar Charles Lutwidge Dodgson used the pseudonym for the first time, to sign his poem “Solitude,” which was published in a short-lived comic journal called The Train, edited by Edmund Yates.

In fact, it was Yates who chose the name Lewis Carroll. Until then, Dodgson had been using “B.B.” to sign his creative work, but Yates rejected it. Dodgson suggested “Dares,” derived from his birthplace, Daresbury, but Yates didn’t like that either. So Dodgson came back with more options: Edgar Cuthwellis, Edgar U.C. Westhill (both of which were anagrams of his name) and Lewis Carroll, which he had arrived at by translating his first two names into Latin and back again, and then reversing them. So Charles Lutwidge became Carolus Ludovicus became Lewis Carroll. Yates, obviously, picked the latter option.

Though he was open about his pen name among his friends, Dodgson refused to acknowledge it publicly, even as Carroll’s popularity grew. He actually carried around a printed leaflet—which he called his “Stranger circular”—to hand to people who began to approach him about Lewis Carroll. He also used it to return strangers’ mail addressed to him as Carroll. It said:

Mr. Dodgson is so frequently addressed by strangers on the quite unauthorized assumption that he claims, or at any rate acknowledges the authorship of books not published under his name, that he has found it necessary to print this, once for all, as an answer to all such applications. He neither claims nor acknowledges any connection with any pseudonym or with any book that is not published under his own name.

Sorry, Charles. We’ve all got your number now.

(lithub.com)