Ancient Wonderland

We arm you with exactly what you’re going to talk about while waiting in line for Tim Burton’s newest flick

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (pen name: Lewis Carroll) originally told the story of Alice and her adventures in Wonderland to the daughters of a friend—one of whom was conveniently named Alice—back in 1862. Next thing you know, Tim Burton’s turning the story into a 3D movie.

But it turns out, Carroll was just as fascinating as his creations. Here are some Lewis Carroll facts to throw out to your friends this weekend, during the inevitable time you spend waiting in line for Alice in Wonderland seats.

Genesis Some Wonderland characters were named after acquaintances, with Carroll himself being the Dodo bird. He suffered from a stutter, and “Dodo” is what he’d sometimes end up saying when trying to get out his own (real) last name, as in, “Do-do-Dodgson.”

Side gig Carroll’s day job was as a math lecturer at Oxford University, and he churned out numerous works on numbers and logic. His list of published books intersperses titles like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with ones like An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations.

Tinkerings Carroll dabbled in inventions. His creations included double-stick tape, a tablet that let him write in the dark, a device for helping invalids read in bed and a game similar to modern-day Scrabble.

Disease Carroll suffered from severe migraine headaches that would actually warp his vision funhouse-mirror-style, causing objects to appear the wrong size. Which may explain why Wonderland was so trippy. The hallucinogenic affliction has since been named in his honor. It’s called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.

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