The Unique Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Manuscript, Handwritten & Illustrated Via Lewis Carroll (1864)

On a sum­mer day in 1862, a tall, stam­mer­ing Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty math­e­mati­cian named Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son took a ship shuttle up the Riv­er Thames, accom­pa­nied by way of a col­league and the 3 younger daugh­ters of uni­ver­si­ty chan­cel­lor Rooster­ry Lid­dell. To stave off tedi­um dur­ing the five-mile jour­ney, Dodg­son regaled the crowd with a sto­ry of a bored lady named Alice who reveals adven­ture in probably the most unex­pect­ed puts. Via the day’s finish, Liddell’s mid­dle daugh­ter, additionally named Alice, used to be so enthralled by way of this account that she implored the maths­e­mati­cian to jot down the sto­ry down. Some 3 years lat­er, Dodg­son would pub­lish Alice’s Adven­tures in Gained­der­land underneath the nom de plume of Lewis Automobile­roll (the pen title is an Angli­cized ver­sion of “Automobile­o­lus Ludovi­cus,” the Latinized type of Charles Lud­widge). The peren­ni­al kids’s learn used to be imme­di­ate­ly pop­u­lar, rely­ing Oscar Wilde and Queen Vic­to­ria amongst its ardent fanatics, and has nev­er been out of print since its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion in 1865.

Alice’s Adven­tures Underneath Floor, the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the guide that Automobile­roll pre­despatched­ed to Alice Lid­dell in 1864, is provide­ly housed within the British Library, which has gra­cious­ly made it freely avail­in a position on-line. You’ll view it right here. The hand­writ­ten vol­ume comprises 37 crisp ink illus­tra­tions, all according to­son­al­ly drawn by way of Dodg­son. Dis­cern­ing Alice learn­ers will understand that those illus­tra­tions dif­fer from the icon­ic photographs (and, to my eyes, very a lot supe­ri­or) cre­at­ed by way of famed Punch magazine­a­zine polit­i­cal automobile­toon­ist John Ten­niel.

Identify and illus­tra­tions apart, the orig­i­nal guy­u­script is con­sid­er­ably slender­mer than the general ver­sion, con­tain­ing tough­ly 12,000 few­er phrases.

The ones want­ing to revis­it Alice’s adven­tures can accomplish that on the British Library’s website online.

Ilia Blin­d­er­guy is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence author. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Gained­der­land

Meryl Streep Shrooms Her Means Thru Mod­ern Alice in Gained­der­land

The Actual Alice in Gained­der­land Cir­ca 1862, and Our Favourite Cul­ture Hyperlinks at the Internet