The story

By Erika Enigk

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“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank.”

Everyone gets bored sometimes, but imagine a day when boredom leads to a grand adventure, when sitting in the grass with nothing to do might soon end when you spot a strange creature, like a rabbit with a pocket watch. That’s what happened 150 years ago to a girl named Alice in a book called “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

The story

The story begins when a bored Alice spots the White Rabbit and follows him down his rabbit hole to a place where there are magic potions that make her grow and shrink, strange creatures like a cat who can make himself disappear, and an evil queen who invites her to play croquet.

But the story behind the story is just as interesting.

It’s been said that the author, Lewis Carroll (whose real name was Charles Dodgson), was friends with a family called the Liddells. One day, while enjoying an outing, he told a fantastical story to Alice Liddell, who was 10 years old, and she loved it so much that he wrote it down.

A few years later, he added to the story and had it illustrated and published. He went on to write more about Alice in “Through the Looking Glass.”

The author

With such a famous book to his name, Dodgson was surprisingly not an author at the start. Born in England, he was the son of a reverend. As a child, he went deaf in one ear after a fever, and at 17, he got whooping cough, a serious condition that affected his breathing the rest of his life. He also stammered when he spoke, but only to adults. For some reason, he didn’t stammer when talking to children.

Dodgson had always enjoyed writing, but before doing so professionally, he was a mathematician. He also enjoyed photography and took many photos of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for his most famous story.

The legacy

Although the original Alice story celebrates its 150th birthday this month, there are many other stories inspired by it. People have made art, movies and music based on the story.

JOHN TENNIEL/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Carroll