Alice in Wonderland

Background

"All in the golden afternoon..."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was inspired on 4 July 1862, when Lewis Carroll and Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed up the river Isis with the three young daughters of Carroll's friend Henry Liddell:[8][9] Lorina Charlotte (aged 13; "Prima" in the book's prefatory verse); Alice Pleasance (aged 10; "Secunda" in the verse); and Edith Mary (aged 8; "Tertia" in the verse).[10]

The journey began at Folly Bridge, Oxford, and ended 5 miles (8 km) upstream at Godstow, Oxfordshire. During the trip Carroll told the girls a story that he described in his diary as "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" and which his journal says he "undertook to write out for Alice".[11] Alice Liddell recalled that she asked Carroll to write it down: unlike other stories he had told her, this one she wanted to preserve.[12] She finally received the manuscript more than two years later.[13]

4 July was known as the "golden afternoon", prefaced in the novel as a poem.[14] In fact, the weather around Oxford on 4 July was "cool and rather wet", although at least one scholar has disputed this claim.[15] Scholars debate whether Carroll in fact came up with Alice during the "golden afternoon" or whether the story was developed over a longer period.[14]

Carroll had known the Liddell children since around March 1856, when he befriended Harry Liddell.[16] He had met Lorina by early March as well.[17] In June 1856, he took the children out on the river.[18] Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, who wrote a literary biography of Carroll, suggests that Carroll favoured Alice Pleasance Liddell in particular because her name was ripe for allusion.[19] "Pleasance" means pleasure and the name "Alice" appeared in contemporary works including the poem "Alice Gray" by William Mee, of which Carroll wrote a parody; and Alice is a character in "Dream-Children: A Reverie", a prose piece by Charles Lamb.[19] Carroll, an amateur photographer by the late 1850s,[20] produced many photographic portraits of the Liddell children—but none more than Alice, of whom 20 survive.[21]

Manuscript: Alice's Adventures Under Ground

Page from the manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground, 1864

Carroll began writing the manuscript of the story the next day, although that earliest version is lost. The girls and Carroll took another boat trip a month later, when he elaborated the plot of the story to Alice, and in November he began working on the manuscript in earnest.[22] To add the finishing touches he researched natural history in connection with the animals presented in the book, and then had the book examined by other children—particularly those of George MacDonald. Though Carroll did add his own illustrations to the original copy, on publication he was advised to find a professional illustrator so that the pictures were more appealing to its audience. He subsequently approached John Tenniel to reinterpret Carroll's visions through his own artistic eye, telling him that the story had been well liked by the children.[22]

Carroll began planning a print edition of the Alice story in 1863.[23] He wrote on 9 May 1863 that MacDonald's family had suggested he publish Alice.[13] A diary entry for 2 July says that he received a specimen page of the print edition around that date.[23] On 26 November 1864, Carroll gave Alice the manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground, with illustrations by Carroll, dedicating it as "A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer's Day".[24][25] The published version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is about twice the length of Alice's Adventures Under Ground and includes episodes, such as the Mad Hatter's Tea-Party (or Mad Tea Party), that did not appear in the manuscript.[26][23] The only known manuscript copy of Under Ground is held in the British Library.[23] Macmillan published a facsimile of the manuscript in 1886.[23]


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