Monday 9 July 2012

Meet The Girl Who Inspired 'Alice in Wonderland'

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One hundred and fifty years ago a young mathematician by the name of Charles Dodgson, better-known as Lewis Carroll, boarded a boat with a small group, setting out from Oxford to the nearby town of Godstow, where the group was to have tea on the river bank. The party consisted of Carroll, his friend Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and the three little sisters of Carroll's good friend Harry Liddell - Edith, Alice, and Lorina.

Entrusted with entertaining the young ladies, Dodgson fancied a story about a whimsical world full of fantastical characters, and named his protagonist Alice. So taken was Alice Liddell with the story that she asked Dodgson to write it down for her, which he did when he soon sent her a manuscript under the title of Alice's Adventures Under Ground.

1 comment(s):

soubriquet said...

It's a beautiful place, Godstow, with the ruins of an abbey, and a pub, the Trout, beside the river, which seems, around there, to be filled with trout. The fish seem to have no fear of humans, you can feed them, hold fragments of bread between your fingers, and they'll come and nibble.

It's not a town though, I doubt that more than six people live in Godstow.