He came up with the penname, along with a few others, when publishing a poem in a magazine. From the list of options, his editor picked "Lewis Carroll" and he used this name for the rest of his life, first as a byline for his poetry and later when publishing children’s books or writing publicly in the persona of Lewis Carroll. He was known in daily life as Charles Dodgson, and used his real name when lecturing and publishing on mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford University, and when keeping up with his voluminous correspondence. Carroll was also one of the most important amateur photographers of the Victorian era, and it was while photographing in the Christ Church deanery garden, also in the spring of 1856, that he first met Alice Liddell, who later inspired the children’s classic.
Alice Lidell was the fourth of ten children born to Lorina and Henry Liddell. When she was four years old the family moved to Oxford following her father's appointment as the Dean of Christ Church College. The Liddell children were raised in the Christ Church deanery, located just off of the college’s central Tom Quad, and their lives were filled with comfort but strictly regulated: Alice and her sisters had a governess and a constant stream of tutors and instructors, including the famous art critic John Ruskin, who gave them art lessons.
Down the Rabbit-Hole
"When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought!"
This section explores the long creative process involved in bringing the Alice story to the public. Carroll later recalled that when he first told the story during the afternoon boating trip, he was desperate to "strike out some new line of fairy-lore" and, with no idea what would follow, sent his heroine "straight down a rabbit-hole." Wonderland emerged over the long afternoon, and at the end of the day, the ten-year-old Alice asked for a written copy of the tale.
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground, page 11; Copyright © The British Library Board
It took Carroll a little over two years to finish the manuscript, and still another year to expand and prepare it for publication. Carroll presented a slim volume – the original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures — to Alice in 1864.
When Carroll decided to publish the story, he commissioned John Tenniel to re-illustrate the book. Several of Tenniel's illustrations were influenced by Carroll's drawings in the manuscript, and author and artist collaborated closely on the designs. Carroll was sensitive to the relationship between text and image and gave instructions as to the exact size of the pictures and precisely ordered their placement. This acute attention to the overall design of the book — the way in which his witty and inventive text interacts with Tenniel’s beautiful drawings — was central to its brilliant reception.
Carroll had originally hoped to publish Alice for the 1864 Christmas market, but delays with the illustrations pushed the date back by several months. In May, it was clear that the book could be ready by summer and Carroll pushed to have some copies published before the three-year anniversary of the boating trip. Two thousand copies were printed at the Clarendon Press in Oxford. The printer delivered the first copies to the Macmillan publishing house on June 27, just in time to have one specially bound and sent to Alice for the anniversary.
John Tenniel (1820–1914), "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" (The Mad Tea Party), 1885, Hand-colored proof. Gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., The Morgan Library & Museum, Photography by Steven H. Crossot
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