On November 26, 1865 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pen name Lewis Carroll published the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
From Wikipedia:
[Alice in Wonderland] … tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
Since the invention of the printing press – and becoming increasingly popular since the 19th century – many successful authors would create and publish their own works. These self-published authors would gain more control of their work, earn greater profits, and eschew the practical bondage required by publishers. Publishers have repeatedly attempted to frame these and other self-published authors as using “vanity publishing” in an attempt to shame them. To be clear: most people can’t name a single publisher … but they can name MANY self-published authors. And English classes don’t have assignments to read Random House or Penguin, but they do have assignments on Twain, Tennyson, Kipling, and Thoreau.
Writers like Benhcamin Franklin, Lewis Carroll, Alexander Dumas, Alexander Pope, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Anaïs Nin, Beatrix Potter, Carl Sandburg, D.H. Lawrence, E. Lynn Harris, e.e. cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, Henry David Thoreau, Irma Rombauer, John Muir, Ken Blanchard, L. Frank Baum, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Leo Tolstoi, Lord Byron, Louis L’Amour, Marcel Proust, Margaret Atwood, Mark Twain, Marlo Morgan, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pat Conroy, Percy Shelley, Robert Bly, Robert Service, Robinson Jeffers, Rod McKuen, Rudyard Kipling, Spencer Johnson, Stephen Crane, Stephen King, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Paine, Tom Peters, Upton Sinclair, Virginia Woolf, W.E.B. DuBois, Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, William Blake, William Strunk, Zane Grey have all self-published some or all of their works.
Congratulations and remembrance to Lewis Carroll for self-publishing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on this the 148th anniversary of it’s publication!