Lewis Carroll in Guildford

Celebrating 160 Years of Alice

2025 marks 160 years since Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published on 26 November 1865.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under his pen name Lewis Carroll, is best remembered for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (1871).

Carroll in Guildford

Guildford became the town most connected to his adult life after Oxford. Carroll often visited Guildford, where his sisters lived at a house called The Chestnuts on Castle Hill from 1868. He would always spend Christmas there. When visiting, he photographed the children of Guildford friends in the garden, took part in amateur plays and went for long walks. On one of these walks, he thought of the last line for his poem The Hunting of the Snark. Occasionally, he also preached at St Mary’s Church.

When he stayed in Guildford, Carroll was usually on holiday. However, he did finish Alice through the Looking Glass there.

Dodgson Family Collections

Surrey History Centre in Woking holds several significant collections relating to Lewis Carroll. These provide important evidence of his private life as the Reverend Dodgson, and his time spent corresponding and meeting with family and friends.

Lewis Carroll died at The Chestnuts, in 1898, and is buried in The Mount Cemetery, Guildford. He had kept many records about different parts of his life, as a university teacher and expert in maths and logic, as Lewis Carroll the writer, and as an amateur photographer. Over the last 75 years, archives relating to Dodgson’s childhood, letters and his original photographs of his brothers, sisters and aunt have been placed in the care of Surrey History Centre. This decision was taken in recognition of the importance of the county to the writer and his family. Over the last two years, the Centre has been delighted to receive important items which will go on public show for the first time this October.

This Side of the Looking Glass: Archives from the Real Life of Lewis Carroll

Exhibition and events

These recently acquired additions to the collection are on display from Wednesday 1 October to Thursday 30 October at Surrey History Centre, Woking.

If you are unable to visit in person, join Isabel Sullivan, Senior Archivist and curator for a virtual walk through and talk on Zoom. This will take place on Wednesday 15 October at 5.30pm.

For October half term, the Centre is also running free drop-in family activities based on Alice in Wonderland. Here, children ages 3-12 can create crafts fit for a Mad Hatter’s tea party.

More information on Surrey History Centre’s events.