Lewis Carroll is a pen-name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was the author's
real name and he was lecturer in Mathematics in Christ Church, Oxford.
Dodgson began the story on 4 July 1862, when he took a journey in a
rowing boat on the river Thames in Oxford together with the Reverend
Robinson Duckworth, with Alice Liddell (ten years of age) the daughter
of the Dean of Christ Church, and with her two sisters, Lorina (thirteen
years of age), and Edith (eight years of age). As is clear from the poem
at the beginning of the book, the three girls asked Dodgson for a story
and reluctantly at first he began to tell the first version of the story
to them. There are many half-hidden references made to the five of them
throughout the text of the book itself, which was published finally in
1865. The text for this edition is based on the text established on the
basis of Selwyn Goodacre's version of Lewis Carroll's final revised text
of 1897; Goodacre's edition is augmented "with certain corrections, and
elimination of errors". To that text a number of further alterations
have been made in order to correct some inconsistencies which remained,
or which were introduced, in Carroll's final revised text.