Many people described Charles Lutwidge Dodgson as shy. He wasn’t very good in social situations. One of his college students even said Dodgson’s math classes were extremely boring. Children, however, thought very differently of him. When he was with children, he was funny and imaginative. He invented puzzles and games, and created stories that children loved. Those children included Alice Pleasance Liddell, the daughter of a colleague, and her two sisters, Lorina and Edith. Dodgson was, it seems, a wildflower that only bloomed^1 when children were around.
“Tell us a story, please, Mr. Dodgson,” the three girls asked.
“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the side of the river and of having nothing to do. Suddenly, a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her,” he began. He continued for a few minutes, and then stopped. “That’s all until next time.”
The girls complained, so he offered to go on. That day the stories came out one after another. He seemed relaxed in his role as storyteller. Dodgson included the children in the stories, with Alice as the most important character. The other characters included an Eaglet (named for Edith) and a Lory (a kind of parrot) named after Lorina. That day, in particular, Dodgson’s stories were really interesting.
Later, Alice begged^2 Dodgson to write the stories down, and he agreed. However, it wasn’t until two and a half years later that Dodgson finally gave her a dark green leather^3 notebook, the beginning of the stories we now know as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.