Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There are two of the most famous children’s books in the history of literature. It’s hard to imagine other titles that have permeated our cultural consciousness and inspired so much debate. There have been thousands of books written about their hidden meanings, the author and his inspiration and Alice Liddell, the little girl at the heart of the stories.
Alice’s Oxford: People and Places that Inspired Wonderland, a delightful new book by Peter Hunt, Professor Emeritus in Children’s Literature at Cardiff University and Adjunct Professor at Dublin City University, takes the reader on a guided tour of Oxford, highlighting the streets, colleges, River Thames and local landmarks that are woven into the very fabric of the Alice stories.
Hunt says in the introduction that ‘probably no city has absorbed an author and his characters and the originals of those characters into its cultural bloodstream more than Oxford’. He then sets out to reveal the connections between real people and places and the pages of the Alice books.
It soon becomes apparent that this is indeed a tangled web as Hunt delves into the ‘historical and personal rabbit-holes of the old city’. Divided into three main sections – The City, Christ Church, and The River – Hunt tells the story of Oxford as much as Alice and her famous author. He shows how literally hundreds of intricate connections can be found within the pages of the books.
The Alice author, mathematician Charles Dodgson (who wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll), spent most of his life as an academic at Christ Church, one of the largest and oldest colleges in Oxford. Alice Liddell was one of three daughters of the Dean of Christ Church. The Alice books began as stories told to her and her sisters, and Dodgson deliberately included references to people, places, and events that the girls would know.
Illustrated with some of John Tenniel’s original pictures, along with a few maps for reference, Alice’s Oxford is a lovely book for Alice fans and visitors to Oxford alike. Importantly, this book does not try to unveil the oft-debated hidden meanings of the stories. Some of that territory was covered in Hunt’s earlier book, The Making of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and the Invention of Wonderland (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2019). Instead, this volume focuses on connections and relationships between Alice, Dodgson and their time and place.
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Inevitably, Alice scholars and serious aficionados will question some of the conclusions Hunt makes from this ‘web of associations’ but that doesn’t diminish the book’s appeal. These are questions that have been debated for over 150 years and so it will continue. As Hunt freely admits: ‘this book tiptoes through the tulgey wood of possibilities, deductions and wild speculations, leaning towards the facts but not neglecting things that might be true – especially if it would be whimsical if they were.’
Read this lovely book and enjoy tiptoeing through this wonderful web of fantasy and reality. And next time you visit Oxford, book a room to stay at Christ Church College or their Liddell Building in East Oxford to feel a real connection with Wonderland.
Alice’s Oxford: People and Places that Inspired Wonderland, Peter Hunt
Publisher: Bodleian Library Publishing
ISBN: 9781851246298
Pages: 120
Format: Hardback
Publication Date: 24 April 2025
Price: £12.99
