Alice's Oxford People and Places that Inspired Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are two of the most famous fantasies in world literature, and yet their roots are firmly in nineteenth century and the university city of Oxford, England. Oxford’s, streets, colleges and buildings, the River Thames, and the villages on its banks, are imbued with literally hundreds of intricate connections to the books. Their author, Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, spent most of his life as an academic at Christ Church, one of the largest and oldest of the Oxford colleges. His muse, Alice Liddell, who is the thinly-disguised Alice of the books, was the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, and lshe lived there as she was growing up. The ‘Alice’ books began as stories told to Alice and her sisters, and Dodgson incorporated local people, places, and events that they would recognise. But as the books grew, he included a much wider range of satire and caricature, until Oxford itself became an eccentric Wonderland. This book, a guide and a history, explores the city, the colleges, and the river that Alice and Lewis Carroll knew and shared, in all their eccentric and entertaining glory.