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The Curious Tree: Charles Dodgson and the Iffley Yew
The Curious Tree: Charles Dodgson and the Iffley Yew
with Alison Gopnik, Knight Letter, Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, Winter 2011, vol. 2, issue 17, no. 87, pp. 17-24.
Abstract. We argue that an ancient yew in the graveyard of the 1170 church in Iffley, Oxfordshire, famous for the four-foot opening into its hollow interior, was the inspiration for the four-foot door in the tree in Alice's Adventures under Ground, the manuscript for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Archival photographs, parish records, current gravestones, Dodgson's diaries, and catalogs of his photographs contribute to the carefully argued thesis.
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