Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Feeding the Mind
    Feeding the Mind
    Feeding the Mind
    Ebook33 pages20 minutes

    Feeding the Mind

    By Lewis Carroll

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1973
    Author

    Lewis Carroll

    Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has delighted and entranced children for over a hundred years. Lewis Carroll was the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Born in 1832, he studied at Christ Church College, Oxford where he became a mathematics lecturer. The Alice stories were originally written for Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of his college

    Read more from Lewis Carroll

    Related to Feeding the Mind

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?

      May 28, 2019

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Not Writing Right Now

      Apr 14, 2021

      NOT long ago I wrote a piece published in this magazine identifying different species of so-called writer’s block and offering curative suggestions for each one. This “not long ago” time, however, was pre-pandemic time and, as such, feels eons away.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Seven Books I’ll Never Read

      Aug 7, 2018

      Seven Books I’ll Never Read
      6 min read

    • Article

      Get It In Writing

      Mar 1, 2023

      Get It In Writing
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Writer’s Toolbox

      Jan 30, 2018

      1. I pulled the heavy red book down from my dad’s bookshelf. Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, its cover announced. “David Foster Wallace said it’s the only usage guide he ever consulted,” my dad said, a note of pride in his vo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Star Letter

      Dec 1, 2022

      Star Letter
      6 min read

    • Article

      Winter reset

      Nov 14, 2020

      Winter reset
      8 min read

    • Article

      Michael Cunningham

      Dec 11, 2023

      Michael Cunningham
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Fake MFA Syllabus

      Nov 25, 2019

      Student-Instructor: Geoff Martin Phone: low signal, no landline Office: The Montague Bookmill Contact Hours: 24/7 At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself

      8 min read

    • Article

      Margaret Renkl

      Oct 9, 2019

      Margaret Renkl
      3 min read

    • Article

      How To Write A Swan Song

      Nov 26, 2022

      How To Write A Swan Song
      8 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Apr 16, 2021

      under, Madelein. I hope this month’s prize goes a little way towards making you feel as appreciated as you are. Thank you and your colleagues for everything you do for us. First of all, may I say how much I love your magazine! I have been reading it

      4 min read

    • Article

      Star Letter

      Jan 6, 2022

      In April 2022, it will have been 32 years since NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope. An upcoming anniversary that reminds me of that Oscar Wilde quote: ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’ Some days, as many other

      6 min read

    • Article

      Garth Nix

      Mar 22, 2023

      Garth Nix
      2 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Sep 7, 2023

      Given the recent controversy over Coutts bank closing Nigel Farage’s account, a letter by Spike Milligan dated 4 February 1968 reminds us that the failed politician is not the first famous person to take issue with the private bank. ‘How dare you rem

      6 min read

    • Article

      Corresponding With The Past

      Feb 1, 2024

      Corresponding With The Past
      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Nov 4, 2021

      It’s often said that writers should avoid writing for free because it lowers the general standard and leads to poorer conditions. If that were true, then my writing this letter would be wrong. But, I know it’s not. The alternative isn’t a fullypaid l

      5 min read

    • Article

      Opening Lines: Get Them Right … or Else!

      Dec 11, 2023

      Opening lines—get them right … or else! Or else your readers won’t want to keep reading. This means that your novel, memoir, story, or essay won’t get published or won’t reach many readers. Yikes! That reads like the opening to a horror story for wri

      4 min read

    • Article

      Drafting My Memoir

      Oct 10, 2022

      In her bestselling book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott shares one of her now-famous secrets of good writing: shitty first drafts. “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts,” she writes. So true. But Lamott has another piece of advice abo

      2 min read

    • Article

      Stop! Hammock Time

      Aug 1, 2018

      Stop! Hammock Time
      8 min read

    Reviews for Feeding the Mind

    4/5

    22 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A delightful book! In a very few pages, two of Lewis Carroll's short works (c. 1884) are contained in this volume: excerpts from Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing, and the text of Feeding the Mind. Carroll composed, and had professionally printed, a witty, yet practical and instructive, 40-page "guidelines" for written correspondence, which he sent to his acquaintances, along with it a small case for keeping stamps. The instructions concerned beginning, writing and ending a letter, and were as much about the principles of communications as anything else. For example, regarding disagreeable times, he says,If, in picking a quarrel, each party declined to go more than three-eighths of the way, and if in making friends, each was ready to go five-eighths of the way -- why, there would be more reconciliations than quarrels!In Feeding the Mind Carroll starts by saying, "What care we take about feeding the lucky body! Which of us does as much for his mind?" He incorporates the kind of absurdity and humor in this work that one finds in Alice in Wonderland. He corresponds methods for addressing the condition of the body to addressing the condition of the mind. For example, he draws on the pattern of a visit to a doctor for the body to a visit with a doctor for the mind:'Why, what have you been doing with this mind lately? How have you fed it? It looks pale and the pulse is very slow.''Well, doctor it has not had much regular food lately. I gave it a lot of sugar-plums yesterday.''Sugar-plums! What kind?''Well, they were a parcel of conundrums, sir.''Ah, I thought so. Now just mind this: if you go on playing tricks like that, you'll spoil all its teeth, and get laid up with mental indigestion. You must have nothing but the plainest reading for the next few days. Take care now! No novels on any account!'Following is his advice on reading for the health of the mind:1. The proper kind of food. (types of books, novels, essays, et al.)2. The proper amount (he speculates whether or not there could be a FAT MIND).3. Caution about combining too many kinds at once.4. Proper Intervals of reading. (the body may require hours for rest, the mind, minutes)5. Thinking over what one reads. (the equivalent of mastication of food)6. Test the healthiness of the mental appetite of a person.He ends this piece with the thought that it is "one's duty no less than one's interest" to read appropriately.For avid readers, this little work is merely an enjoyable reminder about reading habits. I recommend this for lighting one's mood and mental processes.

    Book preview

    Feeding the Mind - Lewis Carroll

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Feeding the Mind, by Lewis Carroll

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Feeding the Mind

    Author: Lewis Carroll

    Release Date: March 9, 2011 [EBook #35535]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FEEDING THE MIND ***

    Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

    http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images

    generously made available by The Internet Archive.)

    FEEDING THE MIND

    Uniform with the present Volume.

    1s. net each; leather, 2s. net each.

    PRAYERS WRITTEN AT VAILIMA.

    By R. L. STEVENSON.

    A CHRISTMAS SERMON.

    By R. L. STEVENSON.

    London: CHATTO & WINDUS.

    FEEDING THE MIND

    BY

    LEWIS CARROLL

    WITH A PREFATORY NOTE BY

    WILLIAM H. DRAPER

    LONDON

    CHATTO & WINDUS

    1907

    [All rights reserved]

    NOTE

    The history of this little sparkle from the pen of Lewis Carroll may soon be told. It was in October of the year 1884 that he came on a visit to a certain vicarage in Derbyshire, where he had promised, on the score of friendship, to do what was for him a most unusual favour—to give a lecture before a public audience.

    The writer well remembers his nervous, highly-strung manner as he stood before the little room full of simple people, few of whom had any idea of the world-wide reputation of that shy, slight figure before them.

    When the lecture was over, he handed the manuscript to me,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1