Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a children’s story that has captivated the world since its publication in the 1860s. The book is celebrated in Oxford each year on 4th July, which is also known as “Alice’s Day”. This is the date that Charles Dodgson (known under the pen name of Lewis Carroll) first told the story that later evolved into the book that is much-loved across the world.
In 2025, Christ Church College, Oxford, received a remarkable gift from an American donor: Lewis Carroll’s personal copy of the first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This magical object will no doubt draw literary scholars and tourists to Oxford, but it also forms part of OUP’s history. The Press printed this first edition in 1865 and today, copies are among the most sought-after books in the world.
The story behind it is as tangled as any of the riddles or logic puzzles in the book itself. Charles Dodgson (1832-98) was a Mathematical Lecturer at Christ Church and he befriended the family of the Dean, Henry Liddell. Alice famously grew out of a nonsense tale Dodgson dreamt up to entertain them during a boating trip in July, 1862. Several more chapters, including “The Mad Hatter’s Tea-Party”, appeared when Alice Liddell, the fourth of the Dean’s ten children, insisted Dodgson write it all down. Adding some awkward illustrations, Dodgson produced what he called Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Others read the manuscript, including the fantasy writer George MacDonald, and it was MacDonald who urged Dodgson to publish the tale.
The Press was the obvious choice to print Alice, with a snappier title. Dodgson had already arranged for OUP to produce some of his mathematical work, and he was also a close friend of Bartholomew Price, Dodgson’s former Maths tutor and now Secretary to the Delegates of OUP (essentially it’s executive head). Even so, the book was very far from Oxford’s usual remit. Dodgson had to fund the project himself, and Archive records show that he paid £142 for 2,000 copies to be produced in 1865. Bound volumes were then distributed to Dodgson’s friends, including a special presentation copy in white vellum for Alice Liddell herself. One went to the book’s professional illustrator, the cartoonist John Tenniel, who was Dodgson’s choice to replace his own, rather gawky drawings in the text. It was at this point that the whole project almost came to grief.
Tenniel was unhappy by what he saw. He loathed the quality of Oxford’s printing, and insisted Dodgson cancel the whole edition. Reluctantly, Dodgson tried to retrieve the 40 or so bound copies then in circulation and succeeded in getting about half back – including Alice Liddell’s. Most he then gave away a second time, to children’s hospitals and orphanages, and very few have since come to light. So far as we know, only about 20 copies survive from what is known as the first issue of the first printing of Alice. Dodgson took the title to Macmillan, who reprinted it to Tenniel’s satisfaction and published it with immediate success, although OUP did provide the printing plate for the tricky type-setting of The Mouse’s Tale. Dodgson sold the rest of the original unbound stock to a New York publisher. Each first issue Oxford copy of Alice is now worth a small fortune.
Alice Liddell never tried to reclaim her white vellum copy, and in later life she expressed very little interest in Dodgson or his work. To this day Alice seems a book which readers love entirely or not at all – and odd as it may seem, the adult person who inspired it perhaps became utterly immune to its charm.
