Alice's Oxford
People and Places that Inspired Wonderland
Alice's Oxford
People and Places that Inspired Wonderland
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Publisher: Bodleian Library
ISBN: 9781851246298
Number of Pages: 120
Published: 24/04/2025
Width: 12.9 cm
Height: 19.8 cm
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.
About this book
Before we begin: ‘Dodgson’ and ‘Carroll’
Alice, Charles and Oxford
The real Alice: what Alice would have known
What Charles Dodgson knew and what
Lewis Carroll wrote
The Alice of Wonderland and Looking-Glass
The books and this book
The curious case of John Tenniel
The City
Ashmolean Museum
Oxford Botanic Garden – and other Gardens
High Street: a bank, marmalade, two (or three) hatters
and an hotel
92–4 The Old Bank and the mysterious Mr Forster
83–4 The marmalade makers
48–9 The mad High Street hatter
22 Yet another hatter
17–18 The Mitre: a most distinguished establishment
Museum of Natural History: a rabbit, a dodo and a fish
Pembroke College and a bat
The railway comes to Oxford
The other railways
The paper house
An invisible uncle
St Aldate’s: Alice’s Shop and a sheep
Trinity College and a duck
Christ Church
Cathedral windows: legend, tragedy and a cat
Chapter House door and Queen Alice
Christ Church Meadow and the way to the river
Deanery garden: Alice’s world
Great Hall and Alice’s neck
Tom Quad and the writing of Alice
Tom Tower and Great Tom: time matters
The River
Folly Bridge
Upstream
Binsey, a dormouse, and a well
Godstow and some wel traps
Port Meadow
Downstream
Iffley
Nuneham
Sandford
