Feeding the Mind

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About this book

Books become meals for the intellect in Lewis Carroll's short lecture on reading habits. Using dinners, digestion and imaginary visits to a doctor, he argues that the mind needs care as deliberately as the body. His advice concerns the choice and quantity of reading, the confusion caused by taking in too many subjects at once, and the need to think over what one has read. The extended comparison gives practical observations a comic shape.

A prefatory note by William H. Draper recalls Carroll delivering the lecture to a small audience in Derbyshire in 1884. It also includes samples of his advice on letters, from writing legibly to easing a disagreement through a friendlier reply. Together, the lecture and note offer a compact look at his wit and concern for everyday habits. Readers interested in concentration will find his suggestion of brief, regular pauses especially concrete.

About the author

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglican deacon. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871), some of the most important examples of Victorian literature.