ALICE’S Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a famous fantasy book, but it was dreamed up, surprisingly, by a math teacher. Charles Dodgson (the real name of “Lewis Carroll”) was a lecturer (讲师) at Oxford University. One afternoon, taking a boat down the river with a friend and his young daughters, Dodgson invented a tale to entertain the children. It was a hit with them, especially with Alice Liddell, the little girl who Dodgson put at the center of the book he later wrote.