Managing Information News| British Library Put Manuscript Of 'Alice’s Adventures Under Ground' Online

Managing Information News| British Library Put Manuscript Of 'Alice’s Adventures Under Ground' Online: "On 21 September 2005, the original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, one of the world’s most popular and well known children’s books, will be available to internet users for the first time.

This latest addition to the British Library’s Turning the Pages is a fully digitised version of the original manuscript containing 90 pages and 37 illustrations. Its pages can be ‘virtually’ turned and viewed on-line on the British Library’s website, in the Treasures Gallery of the British Library and on a new CD-ROM.

Written by Lewis Carroll, the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground later published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was a gift to Alice Liddell. Carroll befriended Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell, the young daughters of the Dean of his college, Christ Church, while taking photographs in the Deanery garden. One summer’s day in 1862 he entertained them on a boat trip with a story of Alice’s adventures in a magical world entered through a rabbit-hole. The children adored the story and the 10-year old Alice implored Carroll to write it down for her. It took Carroll until February 1863 to write out the whole text in neat ‘manuscript print’. When the text was completed Carroll added his illustrations and eventually presented Alice with the book in November 1864 with the inscription ‘A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child, in Memory of a Summer Day’.

Encouraged by friends and family, Carroll went on to rewrite and enlarge the story for publication in 1865. John Tenniel was commissioned to provide the illustrations, several of which were based on Carroll’s original sketches in the manuscript."