Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Title page of the original edition (1865)
Author Charles "Lewis Carroll" Dodgson
Illustrator John Tenniel
Country England
Language English
Genre(s) Children's fiction
Publisher Macmillan
Publication date 1865
Media type Print
Followed by Through the Looking-Glass

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children's literature by the English mathematician and author, the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, written 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 grotesque figures like talking playing cards and anthropomorphic creatures.

The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson's friends (and enemies), and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize. The Wonderland described in the tale plays with logic in ways that have made the story of lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the most characteristic examples of the genre of literary nonsense.

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

Illustration by Arthur Rackham
Illustration by Arthur Rackham

Contents

[edit] History

Alice was first published on 4 July 1865, exactly three years after the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed in a boat up the River Thames with three little girls:[1]

  • 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)
Facsimile page from Alice's Adventures Under Ground
Facsimile page from Alice's Adventures Under Ground

The journey had started at Folly Bridge near Oxford, England and ended five miles away in the 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 on 26 November 1864 gave Alice the manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground. Some, including Martin Gardner, speculate there was an earlier version that was destroyed later by Dodgson himself when he printed a more elaborate copy by hand (Gardner, 1965), but there is no real evidence to support this.

According to Dodgson's diaries, in the spring of 1863 he gave the unfinished manuscript 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. Before he had even finished the manuscript for Alice Liddell he was already expanding the 18,000-word original 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 destroyed because Tenniel had objections over the print quality. (Only 23 copies 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.) 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. Among its first avid readers were young Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria. The book has never been out of print since. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into 125 languages, including Esperanto and Faroese. There have now been over a hundred editions of the book, as well as countless adaptations in other media, especially theatre and film.

[edit] Publishing highlights

  • 1865: Alice has its first American printing. As was the case with most American books of this period, this was pirated from the British edition without any payment. [2]
  • 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.
  • 1961: The Folio Society publication with 42 illustrations by John Tenniel.
  • 1964: Alicia in Terra Mirabili is published: the first Latin translation of the book.
  • 1998: One of the few surviving copies of the 1865 first edition is sold at auction for US$1.5 million, becoming the most expensive children's book ever traded.

[edit] Plot summary

A girl named Alice is bored while on a picnic with her older sister, who is reading a book which 'had no pictures or conversations in it...'. Alice takes interest in a passing white rabbit that is dressed in a waistcoat and muttering "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" She follows the rabbit down a rabbit hole, then finds herself falling down into a dreamlike world. As she continues to try to follow the rabbit, she has several adventures. She grows to gigantic size and then shrinks to a fraction of her original height, meets a group of small animals swimming in a sea of her own (previously shed) tears, and gets trapped in the rabbit's house when she enlarges herself again. After meeting the Duchess, she carries away a baby which changes into a pig, then meets the Cheshire cat, which disappears, leaving only its smile behind. She joins the Mad Hatter and the March Hare at a never-ending tea party, goes to the seashore and meets a Gryphon and a Mock Turtle, and finally attends the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who has been accused of stealing tarts. Just as Alice defies the Queen of Hearts, the dream ends and Alice wakes up at the picnic with her sister.

[edit] Major themes

"The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo"
"The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo"

[edit] Language/word play

[edit] Other Themes

[edit] Characters in order of introduction

Alice surrounded by the characters of Wonderland in The Nursery "Alice" (1890)
Alice surrounded by the characters of Wonderland in The Nursery "Alice" (1890)

[edit] Misconception of characters

Although Tweedledee, Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty, and the Jabberwock are often thought to be characters in Alice in Wonderland, they are actually all in the later sequels to the story, and were never featured in the original.

[edit] 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. One of Tenniel's illustrations in Through the Looking Glass depicts a caricature of Disraeli, wearing a paper hat, as a passenger on a train. The illustrations of the Lion and the Unicorn also bear a striking resemblance to Tenniel's Punch illustrations of Gladstone and 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 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.)

The Mock Turtle also sings "Turtle Soup". This is a parody of a song called "Star of the Evening, Beautiful Star", which was performed as a trio by Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell for Lewis Carroll in the Liddell home during the same summer in which he first told the story of Alice's Adventures Under Ground (source: the diary of Lewis Carroll, August 1, 1862 entry).

[edit] Contents

  • 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

[edit] Poems and songs

[edit] Tenniel's illustrations

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

[edit] Famous lines and expressions

The term "Wonderland", from the title, has entered the language and refers to a marvelous 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.

The White Rabbit.
The White Rabbit.

"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. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole?" He also says, "You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you just 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. Going down the rabbit hole is also a commonly used metaphor for taking drugs.

In an Alternate Reality Game, the rabbit hole is the first puzzle, or first event signalling 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." Episodes of Star Trek and Lost also referenced 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 riddle was later used to stump a character in Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn. This spelling, however, was "corrected" in later editions to "never" and Carroll's pun was lost. Puzzle expert 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.

Arguably the most famous quote is used when the Queen of Hearts screams "Off with her head!" at Alice (and everyone else she feels slightly annoyed with). 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!"

[edit] Symbolism in the text

As is frequently done with works of fiction, people search for symbolism in the text and context of a story.

[edit] References to Mathematical Ideas

Being a mathematician at Christ Church, it has been suggested[3] that there are many references and mathematical concepts in both this story and also in Through the Looking-Glass; examples include:

  • In chapter 1, Down the Rabbit-Hole, in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps "going out altogether, like a candle."; this pondering reflects the concept of a limit.
  • In chapter 2, The Pool of Tears, Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results: "Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is--oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!". This explores the representation of numbers using different bases and positional numeral systems (4 x 5 = 12 in base 18 notation; 4 x 6 = 13 in base 21 notation. 4 x 7 could be 14 in base 24 notation, following the sequence).
  • In chapter 5, Advice from a Caterpillar, the Pigeon asserts that little girls are some kind of serpent for both little girls and serpents eat eggs. This general concept of abstraction occurs widely in many fields of science; an example in mathematics of employing this reasoning would be in the substitution of variables.
  • In chapter 7, A Mad Tea-Party, the March Hare and Mad Hatter give several examples in which the semantic value of a sentence A is not the same value of the inverse of A (for example, "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"); in logic and mathematics, this is discussing an inverse relationship.
  • Also in chapter 7, Alice ponders what it means when the changing of seats around the circular table places them back at the beginning. This is an observation of addition on a ring of the integers modulo N.

[edit] References to the French Language

It has been suggested by several people including Martin Gardner and Selwyn Goodacre[3] that Lewis Carroll had an interest in the French language, choosing to make references and puns about it in the story. It is most likely that these are references to French lessons which would have been a common feature of a Victorian middle-class girl's upbringing. A sampling of these include:

  • In chapter 2, The Pool of Tears, Alice imagines sending a present to her own foot; she addresses the foot as Alice's Right Foot, Esq.. Esquire is the description of a person whose gender is male; it's been suggested[3] that this is a play on the French word for foot. The word in French is le pied, and due to the rules of the language concerning noun gender, will always be addressed as masculine regardless of the gender of the owner of the foot.
  • Also in chapter 2, Alice posits that the mouse may be French and chooses to speak the first sentence of her French lesson-book to it: "Où est ma chatte?'"
  • In chapter 4, The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill, the White Rabbit's assistant, Pat, states that he has been digging for apples. This is likely a play on the French word for potato, la pomme de terre, which translates word-for-word into the apple of earth.

[edit] Cinematic adaptations

  • Disney's Alice in Wonderland animated feature, released in 1951. It popularized the iconic image of Alice in America as a pretty blonde girl in a white pinafore and a blue dress. The character designs owe much to the original iconic 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:

[edit] Live performance

Lewis Carroll's most famous work has also inspired numerous live performances, including plays, operas, ballets, and traditional English pantomimes. These works range from adaptations which are fairly faithful to the original book to those which use the story as a basis for new works. A good example of the latter is The Eighth Square, a murder mystery set in Wonderland. Written by Matthew D Fleming and Music & Lyrics by Ben J Macpherson. This goth-toned rock musical premiered in 2006 at the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth, England.

With the immediate popularity of the book, it didn't take long for live performances to begin. One early example is Alice in Wonderland, a musical play by H. Saville Clark (book) and Walter Slaughter (music), which played in 1886 at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London.

Over the years, many notable people in the performing arts have been involved in "Alice" productions. One of the most well-known American productions was Joseph Papp's 1980 staging of Alice in Concert at the Public Theater in New York City. Elizabeth Swados wrote the book, lyrics, and music. Based on both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Papp and Swados had previously produced a version of it at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Meryl Streep played Alice, the White Queen, and Humpty Dumpty. The cast also included Debbie Allen, Michael Jeter, and Mark Linn-Baker. Performed on a bare stage with the actors in modern dress, the play is a loose adaption, with song styles ranging the globe.

A free theater script of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is available from FunAntics Theater Scripts at www.angelfire.com/scifi/theaterscripts/alice.html. It includes the original poems that schoolchildren were expected to recite such as "You are Old Father William" and "The Voice of the Sluggard" which Lewis Carroll satirized.

Similarly, the 1992 operatic production Alice used both "Alice" books as its inspiration. However, it also employs scenes with Charles Dodgson, a young Alice Liddell, and an adult Alice Liddell, to frame the story. Paul Schmidt wrote the play, with Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan writing the music. Although the original production in Hamburg, Germany, received only a small audience, Tom Waits released the songs as the album Alice in 2002, to much acclaim.

In addition to professional performances, school productions abound. Both high schools and colleges have staged numerous versions of Alice-inspired performances. The imaginative story and large number of characters are well-suited to such productions.

[edit] Criticism

The book was generally received in a positive light, but has also caught a large amount of derision for its strange and unpredictable tone (which is also one 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.[4] L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz series, likewise disliked having his stories compared to Carroll's, saying his books were fantasy "with purpose" while the Alice stories were just "nonsense".[citation needed] Of course, Baum meant "nonsense" pejoratively, but authors of literary nonsense would take the label as a compliment.

In 1931, the book was banned in Hunan because "animals should not use human language" and it "put animals and human beings on the same level."[5]

[edit] Works influenced

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.

[edit] 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 Alice merchandise in America that is not available elsewhere. One of these is a book called Sherlock Holmes and the Alice In Wonderland Murders.

[edit] Media

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ [1]. Bedtime Stories History of Alice. Retrieved January 29, 2007.
  2. ^ Carroll, Lewis (1995). The Complete, Fully Illustrated Works. New York: Gramercy Books. ISBN 0-517-10027-4. 
  3. ^ a b c Gardner, Martin (1990). More Annotated Alice. New York: Random House, 363. ISBN 0-394-58571-2. 
  4. ^ "Words from the Master". Retrieved from Unseen University January 29, 2007.
  5. ^ "Banned Books Week: September 25-October 2. University of California, San Diego Social Sciences & Humanities Library. Retrieved January 29, 2007.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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