Which river did Carroll row on when he first told the Alice story?

Carroll first told the Alice story while rowing on the River Isis. The event took place on 4 July 1862 during a boating excursion from Oxford toward Godstow with the Liddell sisters and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth.

The River Isis is the traditional Oxford name for the River Thames. The party began at Folly Bridge and travelled roughly five miles upstream. Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, entertained Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell with an improvised tale about a girl’s adventures underground.

Alice Liddell later asked him to write the story down. Carroll began developing the tale into a manuscript called Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which he eventually presented to her in 1864. He expanded and revised it before publication as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.

The river’s name is an easy source of mix-ups. At Oxford, “Isis” does not identify a separate river from the Thames; it is the local name for the Thames. The Cherwell joins the Thames at Oxford, but it was not the river named in Carroll’s account of the famous storytelling expedition.