The Day Alice Was First Told
Next: July 4, 2027
A boat, a picnic, a rabbit hole.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks the anniversary of a summer boat trip. On 4 July 1862 Charles Dodgson, a mathematician at Christ Church, Oxford, rowed up the river from Folly Bridge to Godstow with his friend Robinson Duckworth and the three young daughters of the Dean, Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell. On the way he made up the tale of a girl called Alice who fell down a rabbit hole. Ten-year-old Alice begged him to write it down, and in 1865 an expanded version was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, under his pen name Lewis Carroll.
How it's celebrated
In Oxford the first Saturday in July is known as Alice's Day, in memory of that afternoon. Anywhere else, it is a lovely day to read the book aloud to a child, pack a picnic for the riverbank, or hold a slightly mad tea party of your own.
Did you know
- Dodgson's diary for that day records only 'an expedition up the river to Godstow'; the note about telling the story was added later on the facing page.
- The three little sisters in the Dormouse's tale, Elsie, Lacie and Tillie, are plays on the Liddell sisters' names.
- The first Chinese translation, Alisi manyou qijing ji, was published in Shanghai in 1922 by the linguist Zhao Yuanren, who chose everyday spoken Chinese rather than the classical language.
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