Liddell dressed up as a beggar-maid, photographed by Lewis Carroll (1858)

The manuscript also made its way to George MacDonald, and idol of Dodgson's, who had the perfect litmus test for the story's merit: He read it to his own children, who single-mindedly loved it. Encouraged, Dodgson revised the story for publication, retitling it to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and adding the now-famous scene of the Mad Hatter's tea party and the character of the Cheshire Cat for a grand total nearly twice as long as the manuscript he'd originally sent to Alice Liddell.

John Tenniel's original illustrations of Alice

In 1865, John Tenniel illustrated the story and it was published in its earliest version. Gardner recounts this curious anecdote of the collaboration:

Tenniel's pictures of Alice are not pictures of Alice Liddell, who had dark hair cut short with straight bangs across her forehead. Carroll sent Tenniel a photograph of Mary Hilton Badcock, another child-friend, recommending that he use her for a model, but whether Tenniel accepted that advice is a matter of dispute. That he did not is strongly suggested by these lines from a letter Carroll wrote sometime after both Alice books had been published... 'Mr. Tenniel is the only artist, who has drawn for me, who has resolutely refused to use a model, and declared he no more need one than I should need a multiplication table to work a mathematical problem! I venture to think that he was mistaken and that for want of a model, he drew several pictures of 'Alice' entirely out of proportion—head decidedly too large and feet decidedly too small.'





For more Alice gold, see:





This post also appears on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.