July 4: On This Day in World History … briefly
He told the story to Alice Liddell and she begged him to write it down, and Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript.
1862: Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of world-famous children’s fiction, notably ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and its sequel ‘Through the Looking-Glass’. He was noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy. Poems ‘Jabberwocky’ and ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer and Anglican deacon.
Carroll came from a family of high-church Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell, is widely identified as the original for ‘Alice in Wonderland’, though Carroll always denied this.
On July 4, 1862, in a rowing boat travelling on the Isis from Folly Bridge, Oxford, to Godstow for a picnic outing, 10-year-old Alice asked Charles Dodgson (who wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll) to entertain her and her sisters, Edith (8) and Lorina (13) with a story.
As the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed the boat, Dodgson regaled the girls with fantastic stories of a girl, named Alice and her adventures after she fell into a rabbit-hole. The story was not unlike those Dodgson had spun for the sisters before, but this time Liddell asked Mr Dodgson to write it down for her.
He promised to do so but did not get around to the task for some months. He eventually presented her with the manuscript of ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground’ in November 1864.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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