Lewis Carroll did not, as is widely believed, create the Cheshire Cat. The phrase "to grin like a Cheshire cat" has been around for ages; it is
An old simile popularized by Lewis Carroll:
"please would you tell me," said Alice a little timidly,... "why your cat grins like that?"
"It's a Cheshire cat," said the Duchess, "and that's why."
Alice in Wonderland, (1865), ch. vi.
The phrase has never been satisfactorily explained, but it has been said that Cheshire cheese was once sold moulded like a cat that appeared to be grinning. The waggish explanation is that the cats know that Cheshire is a county palatine [properly the dominion of an earl palatine over which he had quasi-royal jurisdiction] and find the idea a source of amusement.
(source: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable)
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