As all students of English know, there are many words in English that are spelt differently and have a different meaning but have the same sound. This is often exploited in humorous writing as what we call “a play on words” and nobody made better use of this than Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the looking glass”.
Lewis Carroll, who was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, died today, 14th January, 1898 just before his 66th birthday on 27th January. Lewis started inventing the story for Alice Liddell, the daughter of a friend of his, while they were on a boating trip on the River Thames near Oxford. At her request, he subsequently wrote the story and eventually gave her the manuscript as a Christmas present in 1864. The book was published for the first time by Macmillan in July, 1865.
Take a look at these two quotes from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”:
The Mock Turtle:
We called him Tortoise because he taught us.
Alice: It is a long tail, certainly, ...but why do you call it sad?" And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something like this:—