When Charles Lutwidge Dodgson set out one afternoon in July 1862 to invent a story about a girl disappearing down a rabbit hole, he could never have guessed that some 150 years later so many people would still be so entranced by the product of his imagination. Sunshine on the river, three little girls being rowed leisurely along and begging to hear a story, and the young clergyman at the oars turning to look over his shoulder at Alice at the helm, and saying: "Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank..." To tackle a translation of the first book into the...