04 Jul 2023
On This Day
4 July 2023 Cheryl

4 July 1862: Lewis Carroll tells the Alice story for the first time

Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll’s story was originally titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground when he gave a handwritten copy to Alice Liddell. By the time it was published, the name had been changed to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But he went through other titles along the way, including Alice’s Hour in Elf Land, Alice Among the Fairies, and Alice Among the Goblins. [1]

On a sunny afternoon, Charles Dodgson and Reverend Robinson Duckworth enjoyed rowing up the Thames River in a boat with three young girls, Lorina, Alice, and Edith, the daughters of Henry Liddell. During the trip, Dodgson told the girls a story that featured a bored little girl named Alice who goes looking for an adventure.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, and mathematician. Alice Liddell was almost five years old when she first met Dodgson. She lived at Christ Church College at the University of Oxford, where her father was the Dean and Dodgson was a maths tutor. With Dodgson’s study adjoining the Liddells’ lodgings, they soon became close.

The children enjoyed that story told on the river that happy afternoon so much that Alice asked Dodgson to write it down for her. On 26 November 1864, Dodgson gifted her the first manuscript, which he illustrated himself as “A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer’s Day”. The story was eventually edited and published with illustrations by John Tenniel as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, followed by Alice Through the Looking Glass in 1871 – the beginning of a global phenomenon. It has never been out of print, has been translated into nearly 100 languages and remains popular across the world to this day.

Lewis Carroll went on to achieve fame as the story’s author, but the ‘real’ Alice evaded public attention.