“As children', wrote Alice Raikes (Mrs. Wilson Fox) in The Times, January 22, 1932, 'we lived in Onslow Square and used to play in the garden behind the houses. Charles Dodgson used to stay with an old uncle there, and walk up and down, his hands behind him, on the strip of lawn. One day, hearing my name, he called me to him saying, "So you are another Alice. I'm very found of Alices. Would you like to come and see something which is rather puzzling?" We followed him into his house which opened, as ours did, upon the garden, into a room full of furniture with a tall mirror standing across one corner.' "Now", he said giving me an orange, "first tell me which hand you have got that in." "The right" I said. "Now", he said, "go and stand before that glass, and tell me which hand the little girl you see there has got it in." After some perplexed contemplation, I said, "The left hand." "Exactly," he said, "and how do you explain that?" I couldn't explain it, but seeing that some solution was expected, I ventured, "If I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?" I can remember his laugh. "Well done, little Alice," he said. "The best answer I've heard yet." "I heard no more then, but in after years was told that he said that had given him his first idea for Through the Looking-Glass, a copy of which, together with each of his other books, he regularly sent me.”

Share & Save

Meaning

Not documented yet.

When It Was Said

Not documented yet.

Who It Was Said To

Not documented yet.

Historical Context

Not documented yet.

Source

Not documented yet.

Original Language & Translation

Originally said in English.

Did They Really Say It?

Not documented yet.

Did You Know?

Not documented yet.

About Lewis Carroll

English author, poet, mathematician, photographer, and Anglican deacon

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an English writer, poet, mathematician, photographer, and Anglican deacon. He is best known for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, both central works of Victorian literature. His writing is marked by wordplay, logic, and fantasy, and he is also remembered for the poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. Those works are often described as literary nonsense, and some of the odd logic in Alice reflects his published interests in mathematical logic.

More from Lewis Carroll (101 quotes) →

READ THE SOURCE

Books by Lewis Carroll

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

1869

VIEW ON AMAZON

Through the Looking-Glass

1872

VIEW ON AMAZON

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass

1968

VIEW ON AMAZON

Phantasmagoria and Other Poems

1869

VIEW ON AMAZON

A Tangled Tale

1881

VIEW ON AMAZON