Lewis Carroll

Alice in Wonderland

January 27, 1832 
Today is the birthday of the English mathematician and writer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - also known as Lewis Carroll.

Lewis had worked as a librarian at Christ Church College in Oxford. His office window had a view of the Dean's Garden.

Lewis wrote in his diary on the 25th of April in 1856 that he had visited the Deanery Garden, where he was planning to take pictures of the cathedral. Instead, he ended up taking pictures of children in the garden. The children were allowed in the Deanery Garden, but not in the Cathedral Garden, which was connected to the Deanery Garden by a little door.

And so, it was the Oxford Botanic Garden that inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice in Wonderland.

The same garden also inspired the authors, JRR Tolkien and Philip Pullman.
In Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking-Glass is this favorite passage among gardeners:

“In most gardens," the Tiger-lily said, "they make the beds too soft-so that the flowers are always asleep.”
 


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Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll

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