Alice’s Oxford: People and Places that Inspired Wonderland

Hunt’s (emeritus, children’s literature, Cardiff Univ.; The Making of the Alice Books) concise, charming volume traces the influence of Victorian Oxford’s landmarks and prominent citizens on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll (pen name of Charles Dodgson) wrote the books while lecturing in mathematics at Christ Church College and based the title character on the dean’s young daughter Alice Liddell. Examining the contents of the books and the whimsical illustrations of artist John Tenniel, Hunt identifies possible models for characters such as the White Rabbit and Mad Hatter in Carroll’s and Liddell’s Oxford contemporaries, and the originals of Wonderland locations in Oxford’s streets, quads, and architecture. Hunt links Carroll’s mimicry of Anglo-Saxon in the “Jabberwocky” poem with the collection of Anglo-Saxon artifacts at the Ashmolean Museum and posits that the Dodo of Wonderland—a fictional stand-in for Carroll—was inspired by the dodo specimen once displayed in the Museum of Natural History. Although Hunt admits that many of these connections are pure speculation, even the flimsiest threads seem tenable given the small circle of Carroll’s society and the expanse of Carroll’s imagination.