Cоntents intrоductiоn chapter I. The life and work of Lewis Carroll

Ada and Mabel
After Alice has fallen down the rabbit hole and ponders who she is, she mentions the girls Ada and Mabel. In the original ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground’ tale, these names were Gertrude and Florence. Alice had two cousins with these names (Gertrude Frances Elizabeth Liddell and Florentia Emily Liddell) so this may have been a reference to them. Of course it wasn’t appropriate to do this in a mass-published book, so that’s probably why the names were altered (Demakos, “Part I”).
Alice repeats the first sentence in her French lesson-book to the Mouse. Hugh O’Brien has found out that this lesson book actually exists, and identified it as “La Bagatelle: Intended to introduce children of three or four years old to some knowledge of the French language” (1804) (O’Brien).
The queer looking party of animals
At the end of the second chapter from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland it says: “There was a Duck, and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures”. The first part of the line refers to the author, his friend, and Alice’s sisters: all passengers who were with Alice in the boat when the story was first told to her. Lorina is the Lorry and Edith the Eaglet. The Duck is Canon Robinson Duckworth. The Dodo was Charles Dodgson, who had a slight stutter, which made him sometimes give his name as ‘DodoDodgson’. The proof that these last two nicknames were actually used, comes from Dodgson’s inscription in a 1886 facsimile edition of “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”, which he dedicated to Robinson Duckworth. It read: “From the Dodo to the Duck”.
As Lorina was the oldest sibling, it explains the Lorry remarking to Alice: “I am older than you, and must know better”.
The ‘other curious creatures’ in this party represent the participants in an episode entered in Carroll’s diary on June 17, 1862. Carroll took his sisters Frances and Elizabeth, and his Aunt Lucy Lutwidge on a boating expedition, along with Reverend Duckworth and the three Liddell girls.
This is what Carroll wrote in his diary:
“June 17 (Tu). Expedition to Nuneham. Duckworth (of Trinity) and Ina, Alice and Edith came with us. We set out about 12.30 and got to Nuneham about 2: dined there, then walked in the park and set off for home about 4.30. About a mile above Nuneham heavy rain came on, and after bearing it a short time I settled that we had better leave the boat and walk: three miles of this drenched us all pretty well. I went on first with the children, as they could walk much faster than Elizabeth, and took them to the only house I knew in Sandford, Mrs. Broughton’s, where Ranken lodges. I left them with her to get their clothes dried, and went off to find a vehicle, but none was to be had there, so on the others arriving, Duckworth and I walked on to Iffley, whence we sent them a fly.”
Within the original manuscript appear many more details relating to this experience: the Dodo takes Alice, the Lorry, Eaglet and Duck to a house where they can dry instead of doing a caucusrace. Carroll later deleted it because he thought it would have little interest to anyone outside the circle of the individuals that were involved (Gardner, “Annotated Alice” 44).
Frances was Charles’ eldest sibling and four years his senior, and appeared to have an interest in history. Hence, she is probably represented by the Mouse, “who seemed to be a person of authority among them” and told the others the very dry story of William the Conqueror (Batey 40).