Alice's Adventures under Ground

Alice, The White Rabbit, the King and Queen of Hearts, The Mock Turtle . . . every one of these characters, known and loved by five generations of children of all ages, was born on 'a golden afternoon' in July 1862.

On that afternoon, Lewis Carroll — the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Lecturer in Mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford — and a fellow don the Rev. Robinson Duckworth, took three little girls on a boating trip. The girls were the daughters of another friend, Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church.

Though Lewis Carroll was a shy, retiring man, he was always at ease in the company of children; and, relaxed, he would exercise his remarkably inventive imagination for their entertainment. On this occasion, as the small party drifted along the Isis, he began to weave a story around one of his young guests: ten-year-old Alice Liddell. Inventing the plot as he went along, Carroll imparted to his captive audience the story of Alice and The White Rabbit.

Two years later, Alice Liddell received as a Christmas present from Lewis Carroll a morocco-bound book: Alices's Adventures Under Ground. This manuscript, considered by most experts to be the second version of that story begun on a summer's day on the river, was beautifully handwritten and illustrated by Carroll himself.