A very happy un-un-birthday (which is to say, birthday) to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as

A very happy un-un-birthday (which is to say, birthday) to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)andThrough the Looking-Glass (1871). Today marks the 190^th anniversary of his birth in 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. His classic nonsense tales following the character Alice have delighted children and intrigued philosophers for decades.

The genesis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland can be traced to stories that Lewis Carroll told to entertain the Liddell children on rowing trips near Oxford. He had been a close family friend of the Liddells ever since they moved to Oxford in the 1850s. On one rowing trip in 1862, Alice Liddell pleaded with Carroll to write down the story he told that day, and he produced the manuscript version Alice’s Adventures Under Ground for her. This manuscript served as the basis for the print version, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in 1865 by Macmillan to great critical acclaim.

This 1920s edition published by Saalfield, a prolific children’s publisher based in Ohio, features the iconic black and white illustrations created by Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), a prominent political cartoonist who worked for Punchmagazine.

Images from: Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Akron, Ohio: Saalfield Pub. Co, 1920.

Call number: PR4611 .A7 1920

Catalog record: https://bit.ly/3Gjz8mZ