Alice Pleasance Liddell

Lewis Carroll composed this acrostic birthday poem for Alice Pleasance Liddell, the young girl who sparked Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The first letters of each line spell out her full name, transforming a simple tribute into an elaborate act of literary devotion. Written decades after the famous boat trip where Carroll first told her the story of a fall down a rabbit hole, the poem captures something tender and melancholic: the author's enduring fixation on a child now grown. It's a peculiar artifact from a man who never quite let go of his muse, blending playful Victorian verse with something closer to possessive affection. The poem endures not for its versification but for what it reveals about the strange, lifelong hold a single child had on one of English literature's most peculiar geniuses.