The October 1 edition of DART, 150 Years of Wonderland at the Morgan, found its way to the Marketing Department at the British Library, which wrote yesterday to inform me that the original manuscript of Alice Under Ground has been digitized and made available for everyone to read by "turning the pages".

The story about how the manuscript came into the possession of the British Library has some twists and turns of its own, and is included here: 

Reverend Charles Dodgson was a mathematics tutor at Christ Church, Oxford in 1856 when he first met Alice Liddell and her siblings, who were the children of the Dean of the college. Dodgson’s friendship with the children would lead him to create one of the most famous and enduring children’s stories, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 

Turn the pages yourself, here.

The story, which began life as ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground’, was first told to Alice and her sisters, Lorina and Edith, on a trip down the river on 4 July 1862. The children enjoyed the story so much that Alice asked Dodgson to write it down for her. Written in sepia-coloured ink and including 37 pen and ink illustrations (and a coloured title page) the manuscript was presented to Alice as an early Christmas present on 26 November 1864.

Alice Liddell kept the manuscript until 1928 when she was forced to sell it to pay death duties after the death of her husband. The manuscript was sold at auction at Sotheby’s for £15,000 to an American dealer, Dr Rosenbach, who in turn sold it to Eldridge Johnson upon returning to America. Following Johnson’s death in 1946 the manuscript was again sold at auction. This time, however, it was purchased by a wealthy group of benefactors who donated the volume to the British people (and the British Museum) in 1948 in gratitude for their gallantry against Hitler during World War Two. [More]

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