O'Carroll · 1862
Alice on the Isis
On the afternoon of Friday the fourth of July 1862, on a rowing-boat on the stretch of the Thames known above Oxford as the Isis, between Folly Bridge in central Oxford and Godstow village three miles upstream, the Christ Church Oxford mathematics tutor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (writing under the Latinised pseudonym Lewis Carroll), thirty years old, and his Christ Church colleague the Reverend Robinson Duckworth took out the three Liddell daughters of the Christ Church Dean Henry Liddell, Lorina (thirteen), Alice (ten), and Edith (eight), on a rowing-boat picnic. The river journey took the five up to Godstow for a late-afternoon tea on the bank. On the stretch of the river between Folly Bridge and Godstow (about an hour and a half of rowing), Carroll improvised, by Duckworth's later memoir, a extempore fairy-story for the Liddell girls about a small girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a strange country. The Alice in the story is, by Duckworth and by Alice Liddell's 1932 BBC broadcast memoir, openly modelled on the Liddell girl in the boat. At the end of the afternoon, Alice Liddell asked Carroll, on the walk back to Christ Church through the Port Meadow, *Mr Dodgson, please write that story down for me*. Carroll wrote out the first version of the story over the next six months in a vellum-bound manuscript notebook titled *Alice's Adventures Under Ground*, gave it to Alice Liddell as a Christmas present in November 1864, and on the encouragement of his publisher friend Alexander Macmillan revised and expanded it into the 1865 Macmillan publication *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*. The Tenniel-illustrated *Alice in Wonderland* has been continuously in print in English since 1865, has been translated into one hundred and seventy-three languages, and is, by every careful judgment of the children's-literature historians, the foundational text of the modern English-language children's-fantasy literature.
It is twenty past one on the afternoon of Friday the fourth of July 1862, on the river-stretch of the Isis (the Oxford-name for the upper Thames between Folly Bridge and Iffley Lock), about a quarter-mile upstream of Folly Bridge in central Oxford, in heavy clear summer light. He is thirty years old. He is the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born at Daresbury parsonage in Cheshire on the twenty-seventh of January 1832, son of the Reverend Charles Dodgson the Daresbury rector and Frances Jane Lutwidge, schooled at Rugby and Christ Church Oxford (BA 1854, MA 1857), in his eighth year as the mathematics tutor (the Senior Student at Christ Church) and his fourth year of deaconal-but-not-priestly-orders in the Church of England (he had taken deacon's orders in 1861 but, by his stammer and his personal disinclination to the parish ministry, had declined to take priest's orders).
He is in the stern of a clinker-built four-oar Christ Church boat, rowing the second-bow oar. The Reverend Robinson Duckworth, thirty, his Christ Church colleague, is rowing the stroke. In the stern-sheets are the three Liddell daughters of the Christ Church Dean Henry George Liddell (the Greek-lexicographer and the Dean since 1855): Lorina Charlotte (thirteen), Alice Pleasance (ten and a half), and Edith Mary (eight). They are in white-muslin summer dresses with pale-blue ribbons.
He thinks: the three Liddell girls have been on these summer river-picnics with me about ten times in the past eighteen months. The pattern is the row to Godstow for tea at the Trout Inn, the return row in the evening, and a improvised fairy-story for the girls during the rowing.
He thinks: the improvised story today will be a story about a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole. The Alice in the story will be modelled on Alice Liddell who is sitting opposite me in the stern-sheets in the white dress. The rabbit-hole is the Oxford-college below-stairs imagery I have been mapping for some weeks.
He thinks: the Wonderland country at the bottom of the rabbit-hole is the inverse of the Christ-Church-Oxford daily-life. The Wonderland is run by a Queen who beheads people for arbitrary reasons. The Wonderland has a Mad Hatter and a March Hare at a permanent tea-party. The Wonderland is the Oxford-don satirical look at the Oxford-don daily life, written for the ten-year-old daughter of the Dean.
He begins the story, by Duckworth's later memoir to the St James Gazette of 1887: Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do. The three girls listen through the rowing-up to Godstow. The improvised story runs about ninety minutes, by the pace of the row.
They have the tea at the Trout Inn at Godstow at about half past three. They row back down the Isis at about five, arriving at Folly Bridge at about half past six, and walk back along the Port Meadow path through the Christ Church meadow to the Dean's lodgings. On the walk, by Alice Liddell's 1932 BBC broadcast at age eighty (the last surviving witness to the afternoon), Alice asks Carroll: Mr Dodgson, please write that story down for me, please please please.
Carroll wrote the first manuscript version of Alice's Adventures Under Ground in the evenings through the autumn and winter of 1862, completed it in the spring of 1863, illustrated it himself with the thirty-seven pen-and-ink drawings, bound it in green calf vellum, and gave it to Alice Liddell as a Christmas present on the twenty-sixth of November 1864. The Macmillan-publisher Alexander Macmillan visited Dodgson at Christ Church in the spring of 1864, read the manuscript, and offered the expanded-and-illustrated published edition. The Macmillan-Tenniel illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published on the twenty-sixth of November 1865.
Alice in Wonderland sold through its first edition of two thousand copies by Christmas 1865. The Macmillan-Tenniel illustrated edition has been continuously in print in English since 1865. By the 2025 publishing-survey, Alice in Wonderland has been translated into about a hundred and seventy-three languages, the most-translated children's book in publishing history after the Pinocchio of Carlo Collodi (1883) and the Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943). The Macmillan-publisher Macmillan in 2025 still holds the original 1865 Tenniel-illustration plates. The original 1864 vellum manuscript Alice's Adventures Under Ground, by Alice Liddell's 1928 sale at Sotheby's, is in the British Library at the King's Library. Alice Liddell married Reginald Hargreaves of Cuffnells in 1880; she died at Westerham in Kent on the fifteenth of November 1934, eighty-two years old. Charles Dodgson died at his sister's house at Guildford on the fourteenth of January 1898, sixty-five years old, of bronchopneumonia. He is buried at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford; the Christ Church Oxford college chapel has the Dodgson memorial window of 1898. The stretch of the river between Folly Bridge and Godstow is, by the Oxford-tourism convention, called the Alice in Wonderland river and is the most-rowed stretch of the upper Thames by the Christ Church and Lady Margaret Hall college boats.