Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

Is there anyone who doesn't know the basic story? Even those who haven't read the original books have almost certainly seen one of the many, many film versions (see below), and even if they haven't, Alice is one of those works that has worked its way into every corner of pop culture. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the 'regular course' in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. But they turn out to be 'curiouser and curiouser,' seemingly without moral or sense.įor more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic.

Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing 'The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new.' There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters-extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. Despite being an acknowledged classic of nonsense verse, people have always tried to find deeper meaning in it. Lewis Carroll did not invent the 'child goes to a magical world, has adventures, and returns home' plot, but everything written since following that storyline is basically Alice wearing a Campbellian mask. Alice encounters talking flowers, madcap kings and queens, and becomes a pawn in a bizarre chess game involving Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and other amusing nursery-rhyme characters.

The 1872 sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland finds Carroll's inquisitive heroine in a fantastic land where everything is reversed. A classic tale that has been interpreted by many an outstanding artist over the years, this remarkable story of one little girl who embarks on possibly one of the most amazing, fantastical adventures in literary history has more than stood the test of time. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has continuously delighted readers, young and old, for more than a century.

Inverarity One-line summary: The original much-misunderstood children's story and its darker, equally silly but less cheerful sequel.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll