Alice in Wonderland' Celebrates 150 Years Since First Storytelling! Find Out Where It All Started

There's one more thing to celebrate on Independence Day. "Alice in Wonderland" is turning 150 years old on July 4, Reuters reports.

However, for children around the world and adults who grew up with the story, Alice is the same young girl who fell through the rabbit hole. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known to many as Lewis Caroll, first recounted the story on July 4, 1862, but many are wondering, where did this classic tale began?

"It began in a rowboat," the National Geographic recounts the story. 

Dodgson, who was a sub-librarian in the Christ Church College, Oxford, took the daughter's of Dean Henry Liddel, Edith, Lorina and three-year-old Alice, to a rowboat adventure. There, he told the story for the first time, and Alice, whom the heroine was named after, asked Dodgson to write his story.

In 1864, Alice Liddell was granted her wish. Charles wrote the story in a green leather notebook with the title, "Alice's Adventure Under Ground."

In 1865, the book was finally published by Macmillan under its new title, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel. The book was a big hit with 160,000 copies sold.

Robert Douglas-Fairhust, an Oxford academic, tells Reuters about the two sides of Alice's story.

One is a children's classic that guides them as they grow up "because it is about how confusing and surprising and disturbing the adult world is" while the other side is for adults "who want to recapture that sense of wonder that they might have lost."

The author, known as Lewis Caroll, also penned poems and articles. Apart from being a writer, he was also a math lecturer at Oxford University, logician, pioneering photographer and inventor of puzzles.

According to Reuters, "Wonderland" was Dodgson's break from his "rules-based world."

In "Alice's Adventure in Wonderland," Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, "Which way should I go?"

Alice didn't get a straight answer from the Cheshire Cat, but, on the contrary, her book was already heading straight in history as a classic work of literature.

To celebrate the story's 150th year, The Morgan Library & Museum is holding an "Alice: 150 Years of Wonderland" exhibit that started on June 26 and will run through October 11.

The exhibit will feature the original manuscript, which went on a long journey from Alice Liddell's hands to the British Library and is coming to New York for the special occasion. The book is known to have only 20 surviving first prints. 

The event will also feature unseen drawings and letters, vintage photographs and other fascinating objects, many of which have never been before exhibited. 

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