Vol IV of Lewis Carroll's diaries, 1863-64 (pen and ink on paper)

Add. 54343, f.14v - f.15r. On 4 July 1862 the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a professor of mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford, set out on a rowing expedition up the Thames. With him on his rowing trip were the three young daughters of the University’s Vice-Chancellor. The middle child was Alice Liddell, then aged 10. The details of the rowing trip itself are recorded on folio 15 of his diary but the page opposite records why the trip turned out to be so important in the history of English literature. As he rowed up the river Dodgson began to tell the girls a story about a bored child called Alice who follows a white rabbit and ends up having a series of surreal adventures. The story, as recorded in Dodgson’s diary, was initially called ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground’. One year later, under his pen name of Lewis Carroll, the story was published in an expanded form with the new title Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.