Alice In Wonderland Written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland had a vast range of inspirations. The character of Alice herself was based upon the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, which Dodgson attended and where he later taught. He first got the idea for the character on the afternoon of July 4th 1862 while on a boating trip with Alice, her siblings and a friend, Robinson Duckworth. There he drew the inspiration for the characters. Alice became the star of the story. Her sisters Lorina and Edith Liddell were the bases for the characters Lory and Eaglet. His friend Mr. Duckworth was transformed into The Duck. Dodgson even fashioned a character after himself, a dodo with a stammer much like his own. He told the children stories which, months later, he would write down under the title of "Alice's Adventures Underground". A carving found in the Church where Dodgson's Father preached possibly inspired the Cheshire Cat. If you kneel before the carving, it gradually disappears until all that remains is the smile, "which stretches almost from ear to ear", just like the cat in the novel. The rabbit hole may have been taken from two possible sources. First was "Hell's Kettles", three ponds nearby Dodgson's childhood home that were allegedly bottomless, just like the rabbit hole. The second inspiration may have come from a natural geological occurrence near where he later lived, which caused potholes to suddenly appear in the ground. One such pothole destroyed the house used by Dodgson's illustrator. The book was first released under the new title of "Alice in Wonderland" by Macmillan of London after having been increased to 35,000 words from its original 18,000 words and with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, who worked on the famous English magazine "Punch". However, within a month, Tenniel announced that he was unhappy with the illustrations, so a new version was released. By the end of 1866 the new version had sold 5,000 copies (a significant amount at that point in history). In 1868 Dodgson began work on the follow up to "Wonderland", named "Behind the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Saw There", later released as "Through the Looking-Glass". « Back