The Adventures under Ground were written out by hand
and illustrated by the author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
(Lewis Carroll), between 1862 and 1864 for presentation
in manuscript as a Christmas gift to Alice Liddell’s mother.
Alice Liddell was the ten-year-old girl to whom Dodgson
is said to have extemporized the nucleus of the “Alice”
story while boating on the Thames on the afternoon of
July 4, 1862.
In 1863, friends who had read Alice’s Adventures under
Ground persuaded Dodgson to publish his story. He expanded
the 18,000 word original to the 35,000 word final version, changed
the name to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and saw the first
edition published in 1865 by Macmillan of London.
