The Daresbury Lewis Carroll Society

Welcome to the Daresbury Lewis Carroll Society Website.

We are a friendly informal society with a passion for Lewis Carroll and his works. We meet twice a year in Daresbury Village Hall, or at least we did before 'lockdown', at meetings with guest speakers and take part in various Lewis Carroll related events across the area. 

The header shows a collage of scenes which can all be found in Daresbury  with the exception of the picture of a strangely dressed group of people which was taken at the opening of a Lewis Carroll related exhibition. On the left is a picture of part of a stained glass window which you will finf in Daresbury Church.  Next are a Cheshire cat which you'll find in a barn up the road from the church and and a weather vane which is just across the road from the cat. Finally you see the start of the Lewis Carroll Walk.

The Next Meeting of The Society

The next meeting of the society is on Saturday 15th October at the  Parish Rooms, Chester Road, Daresbury,WA4 4AJ starting at 2 p.m. The rooms are next to the Ring O' Bells Pub - a good place for a pre meeting lunch. (See picture above)

Our guest speaker is Mark Davies who is an Oxford local historian, guide and author with a particular interest in the history and literature of the city's waterways, having lived on a residential narrowboat in Oxford for nearly thirty years. He has helped to organise Oxford's annual 'Alice's Day' since the first one in 2007, provides the only Alice-specific guided tours and boat commentaries in Oxford, and is on the committee of the Lewis Carroll Society.  His relevant publications are Alice in Waterland: Lewis Carroll and the River Thames in Oxford and Alice’s Oxford on Foot, and he has lectured on the Oxford background to the Alice stories as far away as India.  You can learn more aboutt him and the Water walks at oxfordwaterwalks.co.uk

Mark's talk is entitled :-

Lewis Carroll’s Adventures in Russia, or Alice in Volgaland

In July 1867 Charles Dodgson went abroad for the first and only time in his life. His surprising destination – ‘ambitious for one who has never yet left England’ – was Russia. Even more surprisingly, he visited not only the more predictable cities of Moscow and St Petersburg, but journeyed a good 250 miles farther east, for what Dodgson’s travelling companion, Henry Parry Liddon, also of Christ Church (Oxford), called a ‘peep at the East’.

Both men kept journals: Dodgson’s is peppered with perceptive and amusing observations, complemented by Liddon’s more staid observations, reflecting his personal objective of assessing the prospects of a reunification of the Eastern and Western churches. The journey came at a time when Dodgson was already contemplating a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), and it was Liddon who suggested the eventual subtitle to Through the Looking-Glass (1872). Although he appeared to have an enjoyable and enlightening experience, Dodgson never again ventured outside Great Britain.

Let us Know if You're Coming

If you are going to attend the talk could you let us know through the contact page so we can have some idea of numbers and who to expect.

New Articles

Keith Wright's Spring 2012 edition of The Daresbury Chronicle. is now completed as is the May 2019 Newsletter. We are now starting on the Autumn 2011 Daresbury Chronicle.  If you haven't already done so do take a look at  Keith Wright's article about Harry Furniss which is well worth a read

Several articles by Stephen Martin are also recent additions to this site. You can see them by following this link to New Articles.

The Daresbury Chronicles were edited and produced by our  chairman at that time, Keith Wright, from  2004  until his death in 2016.  They contain a wealth of information about Lewis Carroll and about our organisation. 

The Newsletter, in its current form, has been produced each Spring and Autumn since 2015.

If you click on either of the covers shown here you will be taken to the articles published in the corresponding magazine.

New articles are added when they become available and then included in the appropriate magazine when it is published.