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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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"Alice in Wonderland" redirects here. For other uses, see Alice in Wonderland (disambiguation).
File:TennielAlice.png
John Tenniel's illustration for "A Mad Tea-Party", 1865
Illustration by Arthur Rackham

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children's literature by the British mathematician and author Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy realm populated by talking creatures and anthropomorphic playing cards.

The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson's friends and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize. The Wonderland described in the tale plays with logic in ways that has made the story of lasting popularity with children as well as grown-ups.

The book is often referred to by the abbreviated title Alice in Wonderland. Some printings of this title contain both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. This alternate title was popularized by the numerous film and television adaptations of the story produced over the years.

History

Alice was first published on July 4, 1865, exactly three years after Reverand OMJ and Reverend Bashy Von Duck rowed in a boat up the River Thames with three underage girls:

  • Lorina Charlotte Liddell (aged 13) ("Prima" in the book's prefatory verse)
  • Alice Pleasance Liddell (aged 10) ("Secunda" in the prefatory verse)
  • Edith Mary Liddell (aged 8) ("Tertia" in the prefatory verse)

The journey had started at Follie Bridge near Oxford, England and ended five miles away in a village of Godstow. To while away time the Reverend Dodgson told the girls a story that, not so coincidentally, featured a bored little girl named Alice who goes looking for an adventure.

The girls loved it, and Alice Liddell asked Dodgson to write it down for her. He eventually did so and in February 1863 gave Alice the first manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground. This original script was probably destroyed later by Dodgson himself when he printed a more elaborate copy by hand, illustrated it, and presented it to Alice as a Christmas present on 26 November 1864 (Gardner, 1965).

He also gave a copy of Alice's Adventures Under Ground to his friend and mentor George MacDonald, whose children loved it. On MacDonald's advice, Dodgson decided to submit Alice for publication. He expanded the 18,000-word manuscript to 35,000 words, most notably adding the episodes about the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Tea-Party. In 1865, Dodgson's tale was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by "Lewis Carroll" with illustrations by John Tenniel. The first print run of 2,000 was shelved because Tenniel had objections over the print quality; a new edition, released in December of the same year but carrying an 1866 date, was quickly printed.

The entire print run sold out quickly. Alice was a publishing sensation, beloved by children and adults alike, and it has never been out of print since. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into over 50 languages, including Esperanto. There have now been over a hundred editions of the book, as well as countless adaptations in other media, especially theatre and film (see below).

Publishing highlights

  • 1869: Alice has its first American printing.
  • 1871: Dodgson meets another Alice during his time in London, Alice Raikes, and talks with her about her reflection in a mirror, leading to another book Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, which sells even better.
  • 1886: Carroll publishes a facsimile of the earlier Alice's Adventures Under Ground manuscript.
  • 1890: He publishes The Nursery "Alice", a special edition "to be read by Children aged from Nought to Five."
  • 1908: Alice has its first translation into Japanese.
  • 1960: American writer Martin Gardner publishes a special edition, The Annotated Alice, incorporating the text of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. It has extensive annotations explaining the hidden allusions in the books, and includes full texts of the Victorian era poems parodied in them. Later editions expand on these annotations.
  • 1998: The suppressed first edition of the book (that is, the edition nixed by Tenniel) is sold at auction for $1.5 million USD, becoming the most expensive children's book ever traded. (Only 23 copies of the 1865 first edition are known to have survived; 18 are owned by major archives or libraries, such as the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, while the other five are held in private hands.)

Plot

Template:Spoiler A girl named Alice is bored while on a picnic with her sister. She finds interest in a white rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat and muttering "I'm late!", whom she follows down a rabbit-hole. She drops into a dream underworld of paradox, the absurd and the improbable. As she attempts to follow the rabbit, she has several misadventures. She grows to gigantic size and shrinks to half her original height; meets a group of small animals stranded in a sea of her own tears; gets trapped in the rabbit's house; meets a baby, which changes into a pig, and a cat, which disappears; goes to a never-ending tea party; plays croquet with an anthropomorphised deck of cards; goes to the shore and meets a Gryphon and a Mock Turtle; and attends the courtroom trial of the Knave of Hearts, who has been accused of stealing some tarts. Eventually Alice wakes up underneath a tree back with her sister.

File:AliceAndFlamingoByTenniel.gif
"The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo"

Thematic elements

Genre: fantasy or horror?

"Children are put off by Alice’s underground adventures not because they cannot understand them; in fact, they frequently understand them too well. Indeed they often find the book a terrifying experience, rarely relieved by the comic spirit they can clearly perceive."
— Donald Rackin, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Nonsense, Sense, and Meaning

The most common perspective on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is that it is a whimsical fantasy. However, there is disagreement with this perspective. To a number of people, the book does not characterize whim and fantasy, but rather horror and self-sustaining insanity. The comedy of the book, while clearly visible, does not mitigate the fact, but rather causes it to stand out by perverse contrast.

Taken from this perspective, the novel (as well as Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There) is a sinister, pernicious world characterized by persons who exist fully by a self-sustaining logic that exists without reference to outside influence, including the influence of a sane, rational, and moral mind. By this perspective, at its essence, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is not a dream but a surreal nightmare involving loss of control, inability to communicate or reason, rampant uncontrolled change of one's self and everything around, and a total inability to gain any foundation in the world.

It is noteworthy that in both novels, people suffer for no reason. The White Rabbit has an air of deposed aristocracy, the Queen of Hearts orders executions for no reason other than her own irritation and/or enjoyment, The Hatter exists in a neverending tea party because he got in a fight with Time and it imprisoned him in Tuesday, etc. Many of these are parables for the society of the time. For instance, from Through the Looking-Glass, the parable of The Walrus and the Carpenter appears to be a parable about the treatment of children and child-labor in the society of the time.

Thus, the very thing that produces appeal and wonder in the book for many people terrifies others. It is a world that exists in different cells, each with internally consistent rules that don't conform to any of the others, each continuing on its way with anything running from apathy to malice, and each able to persist in its state indefinitely. From a child's perspective, if one were to fall down a rabbit hole today one could easily encounter the very same terrifying Wonderland Alice did, changed in only the most vestigial of ways.

Characters in order of appearance

File:Hookah.png
The Caterpillar using a hookah; an illustration by John Tenniel

Character allusions

The members of the boating party that first heard Carroll's tale all show up in Chapter 3 ("A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale") in one form or another. There is, of course, Alice herself, while Carroll, or Charles Dodgson, is caricatured as the Dodo. The Duck refers to Rev. Robinson Duckworth, the Lory to Lorina Liddell, and the Eaglet to Edith Liddell.

Bill the Lizard may be a play on the name of Benjamin Disraeli.

The Hatter is most likely a reference to Theophilus Carter, a furniture dealer known in Oxford for his unorthodox inventions. Tenniel apparently drew the Hatter to resemble Carter, on a suggestion of Carroll's.

The Dormouse tells a story about three little sisters named Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie. These are the Liddell (sounds like "little") sisters: Elsie is L.C. (Lorina Charlotte), Tillie is Edith (her family nickname is Matilda), and Lacie is an anagram of Alice.

The Mock Turtle speaks of a Drawling-master, "an old conger eel," that used to come once a week to teach "Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils." This is a reference to the art critic John Ruskin, who came once a week to the Liddell house to teach the children drawing, sketching, and painting in oils. (The children did, in fact, learn well; Alice Liddell, for one, produced a number of skilled watercolours.)

Contents

File:AliceOnMushroom.jpg
Alice in Wonderland sculpture in New York City's Central Park
  • Chapter 1 -- Down the Rabbit-Hole
  • Chapter 2 -- The Pool of Tears
  • Chapter 3 -- A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
  • Chapter 4 -- The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
  • Chapter 5 -- Advice From a Caterpillar
  • Chapter 6 -- Pig and Pepper
  • Chapter 7 -- A Mad Tea-Party
  • Chapter 8 -- The Queen's Croquet-Ground
  • Chapter 9 -- The Mock Turtle's Story
  • Chapter 10 -- The Lobster-Quadrille
  • Chapter 11 -- Who Stole the Tarts?
  • Chapter 12 -- Alice's Evidence

Poems and songs

  • "All in the golden afternoon..." (the prefatory verse, an original poem by Carroll that recalls the rowing expedition on which he first told the story of Alice's adventures underground)
  • "How doth the little crocodile..." (a parody of Isaac Watts' nursery rhyme, "How doth the little busy bee")
  • The Mouse's Tale (an example of concrete poetry)
  • "You are old, Father William..." (a parody of Robert Southey's "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them")
  • The Duchess' lullaby: "Speak roughly to your little boy..."(a parody of David Bates "Speak Gently")
  • "Twinkle, twinkle little bat..." (a parody of Twinkle twinkle little star)
  • The Lobster Quadrille (a parody of Mary Botham Howitt's "The Spider and the Fly")
  • "’Tis the voice of the lobster, I heard him declare..." (a parody of "Tis the voice of the Sluggard")
  • Turtle Soup (a parody of James M. Sayles' "Star of the Evening, Beautiful Star")
  • "The Queen of Hearts..." (an actual nursery rhyme)
  • "They told me you had been to her..." (the White Rabbit's evidence)

Tenniel's illustrations

John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice do not portray the real Alice Liddell. Carroll sent Tenniel a photograph of Mary Hilton Badcock, another child-friend, but whether Tenniel actually used Badcock as his model is open to dispute.

Famous lines and expressions

The term "Wonderland," from the title, has entered the language and refers to a marvellous imaginary place, or else a real-world place that one sees as "like a dream come true!" It is widely referenced in popular culture— books and film (see below) and pop music. To note just one example, there is a book by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami entitled Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

"Down the Rabbit-Hole," the Chapter 1 title, has become a popular term for going into an adventure to the unknown. In the film The Matrix, Morpheus says to Neo: "I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole?" He also says, "You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." In computer gaming, a "rabbit hole" may refer to the initiating element that drives the player to enter the game.

In an Alternate Reality Game, the rabbit hole is the first puzzle, or first event signaling the beginning.

A "white rabbit" has similar connotations, as a signal to the start of an adventure. In The Matrix, Neo's adventure begins after a message on his computer urges him to "Follow the white rabbit."

In Chapter 6, the Cheshire Cat's disappearance prompts Alice to say one of her most memorable lines: "...a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!" There is a French film called A Grin Without a Cat (1977), directed by Chris Marker.

In Chapter 7, the Hatter gives his famous riddle without an answer: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Although Carroll intended the riddle to have no solution, in a new preface to the 1896 edition of Alice, he proposes several answers: "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!" Note the spelling of "never" as "nevar"—turning it into "raven" when inverted. This spelling, however, was "corrected" in later editions to "never" and Carroll's pun was lost. Puzzle maven Sam Loyd offered these solutions: because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes; Poe wrote on both; bills and tales are among their characteristics; because they both stand on their legs, conceal their steels (steals), and ought to be made to shut up. Many other answers are listed in The Annotated Alice.

In Chapter 8, the Queen of Hearts screams "Off with her head!" at Alice. Possibly Carroll here was echoing a scene in Shakespeare's Richard III (III, iv, 76) where Richard demands the execution of Lord Hastings, crying "Off with his head!" The line as used in the 1967 Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit" has distinct hallucinogenic connotations.

Cinematic adaptations

File:Movie alice in wonderland flowers.jpg
Alice in Disney's animated version

Disney's Alice in Wonderland animated feature, released in 1951, remains the most popular cinematic adaptation of the Alice books. It popularized the iconic image of Alice as a pretty blonde little girl in a white pinafore and blue dress. Other characters made icons by the film include the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and the Caterpillar. The character designs owe much to the original Tenniel illustrations.

The Disney feature combines story elements from both Alice books. It is notable for its distinctly psychedelic visual feel.

Other cinematic adaptations of Alice include:

This webpage has a considerable list of cinematic adaptations with appropriate reviews.

Criticism

The book, although broadly and continually received in a positive light, has also caught a large amount of derision for its strange and random tone (which is also the reason so many others like it). One of the best-known critics is fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who has openly stated that he dislikes the book.

Works influenced

Main article: Works influenced by Alice in Wonderland

Alice and the rest of Wonderland continue to inspire or influence many other works of art to this day—sometimes indirectly; via the Disney movie, for example. The character of the plucky yet proper Alice has proven immensely popular and inspired similar heroines in literature and pop culture, many also named Alice in homage.

Culture and collecting

Alice continues to be a cultural phenomenon today, spawning hundreds of collectors' items, websites, and works of art.

There is a vast Alice-collecting cottage industry, which has recently burgeoned due to the Internet. There are often more than 2500 items up for auction via eBay at any given time, from rare books to more recent commissioned art. Just about every kind of Alice merchandise imaginable is available, from clocks to earrings to pillow cases. They are not always easy to locate, but can often be found in so-called "Alice shops". In England, such shops include The Rabbit Hole in Llandudno and Alice's Shop in Oxford. Smaller ones can be found in Halton Cheshire and in Bournemouth where there is an Alice Theme Park. In the United States they include The White Rabbit in California. In fact, there is a lot of Alice merchandise in America that is not available elsewhere. One of these is a book called Sherlock Holmes and the Alice In Wonderland Murders.

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Additional information
Online book locations
Audio files
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