Interesting Facts
The real Alice in Wonderland
The story of a girl who falls down a hole and finds herself in a magical world is believed to be based on Alice Liddell, a girl who often visited her grandparents at their Charlton Kings (a suburb of Cheltenham) home.
Her grandfather Dr Henry Liddell was Dean of Christ Church College in Oxford where he became a friend of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll. The author was a maths teacher at Oxford and took Alice and her two sisters on a boat trip.
To keep them amused he told a story about Alice and a white rabbit, later published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.
The Liddell’s lived in Hetton Lawn, Cudnall Street, Charlton Kings. The original mirror, or looking glass, is still there. Lewis Carroll was a regular visitor to the home, where Alice’s grandparents lived.
There are at least three links between Alice Liddell and the protagonist in Lewis Carroll’s books.
Carroll set the story on May 4, Alice Liddell’s birthday and in Through the Looking-Glass the fictional Alice declares that her age is “seven-and-a-half exactly“, the same as Liddell on that date.
Carroll dedicated the book to Alice Pleasance Liddell. The poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass, when read downward, spells out Alice Liddell’s full name.
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