is the cheshire cat and grim fairytales copyrighted?

Alice in Wonderland has been in the public domain for ages and you do not have to cite your sources for works in the public domain. The Grimm fairytales are collected folk tales and never were copyrighted (that's not even getting into how little protection any author had of their work in the early 19 th century). There are a lot of modern adaptations of these stories that are copyrighted so the originals are the only ones you could take verbatim passages from without violating the copyright but you are probably not planning to do that anyway.

Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, died in 1898 - over a century ago. It's probable that his books, and therefore his characters, are now in the public domain in Great Britain and possibly elsewhere. Same with the Grimm Brothers in Germany. (Life plus 75 years is usually the safe rule of thumb. It depends on the country of publication. There was a recent suit regarding Sherlock Holmes in the U.S. Conan Doyle died in 1930. His last Sherlock Holmes book, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, was published in 1926. In Canada and Great Britain, it's in public domain. In the U.S., it is not, since American laws on intellectual property are different. Did that mean that the character, Sherlock Holmes, was out of copyright in the U.K. but not in the U.S. and that American producers and writers had to pay fees to Doyle's estate in order to put Sherlock in their movies and books?

BUT it's better not to presume upon it. Get legal advice from a copyright lawyer.

Illustrator's copyrights may be different. Intellectual property laws have become such a spaghetti that no layperson knows for sure what's still under copyright after the creator's been dead over 50 or 75 years. Best to get legal advice.

While "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass' are now in the public domain using the Cheshire Cat would tell your readers/viewers that this is not your creation. "Grimm's Fairy Tales" are also in the public domain but some of the characters are so closely associated with these stories that again you would find it difficult to pass them off as your own creation.

If you take Tim Burton's film "Alice in Wonderland" credit is given to the original source material. While you are free to use the Cheshire Cat you do have to acknowledge the original. Ditto for the fairy tales.

There are a series of books by Jasper Ffode ( the Tuesday Next series) who uses other characters of books blatantly and out right. The Cheshire cat being one of them. It is my understanding the it is public domain. I would suggest you read some of jaspers books for inspiration on how to use someone else characters for your own fiction. He is very very good at it. He celebrates and honor the original characters while adding his own flare and insight. At the very least you can contract him yourself and ask him how he did it.

http://www.jasperfforde.com/

Anything that is published or written by someone else is technically copyrighted. If I draw a picture of man entirely from my own imagination, I hold the copyright to that drawing. If I were to pay to have it legally copyrighted I could actually not only sue and destroy your financials if you were to use it, I could have your blacklisted from ever getting anything published again as you committed a crime.

Those characters are ALL copyrighted and the use can lead to fines, criminal record, blacklistings, criminal charges, and in extreme cases jail time.

Do not steal other people's property.