Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Illustrated with works of nine historical artists and two contemporary artists.

About the Author: Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, third of eleven children of an Anglican priest, was a mathematician and a logician who was a lecturer at Oxford for some 26 years. He was also an accomplished photographer, and a Church Deacon. Dodgson's pen name, (and the name by which you will undoubtedly know him best), was Lewis Carroll. He is best known for his whimsical tales, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

In Carroll's original (1862-1864) manuscript for the story, Alice's Adventures Underground, which he personally illustrated, Alice was not the little blonde girl in a pinafore we have come to know from subsequent illustrations.

Instead, she was originally a winsome, dark haired child, whose likeness had been patterned after ten year old Alice Liddell, the child of a church colleague, for whom the Alice stories had been originally created.

Dodgson wrote four versions of "Alice".

Dodgson first told the story during a pleasant summer outing with friends. Reverend Dodgson, along with a Christ Church colleague, Robinson Duckworth, and the three young daughters of the Dean of Christ Church at Oxford, (Alice, Lorina, and Edith Liddell), in a rowing boat hired from Salter's boatyard, near Folly Bridgehad all set out on a lazy, 2½ hour rowing trip down the river Isis to Godstow, that July 4th in 1862.

Dodgson entertained his fellow passengers with a story he created on the spur of the moment for 10 year old Alice. Alice and her sisters were enchanted with the tale, and Alice later pleaded with Carroll to commit the story to paper, which he did, but he did not complete it until until the following February.

In an article in The New York Times of April 4th 1928 Alice Liddell recalled that:

"The beginning of Alice was told to me one summer afternoon when the sun was so hot we landed in the meadows down the river, deserting the boat to take refuge in the only bit of shade to be found, which was under a newly made hayrick. Here from all three of us, my sisters and myself, came the old petition, 'Tell us a story' and Mr. Dodgson began it.

Sometimes to tease us, Mr. Dodgson would stop and say suddenly, 'That's all till next time.' 'Oh,' we would cry, 'it's not bedtime already!' and he would go on. Another time the story would begin in the boat and Mr. Dodgson would pretend to fall asleep in the middle, to our great dismay."

Robinson Duckworth also described this trip:

"I rowed stroke and he rowed bow (the three little girls sat in the stern) ... and the story was actually composed over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as 'cox' of our gig ... I remember turning round and saying, 'Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?' And he replied, 'Yes, I'm inventing it as we go along.'"

Charles Dodgson himself also recalled that day and others that followed:

"Many a day we rowed together on that quiet stream - the three little maidens and I - and many a fairy tale had been extemporised for their benefit- .. -yet none of these tales got written down: they lived and died, like summer midges, each in its own golden afternoon until there came a day when, as it chanced, one of the listeners petitioned that the tale might be written down for her."