Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children's literature by the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson's friends and to the lessons which 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, mathematicians, and users of psychedelics.

The book has a sequel: Through the Looking-Glass, and movie adaptations often combine elements from both books.

The American writer Martin Gardner has produced a work entitled The Annotated Alice, incorporating the text of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. It has extensive annotations explaining them, including the Victorian poems that Dodgson parodies in the two books.

Table of contents 1 History 2 Contents 3 The plot 4 The Characters in order of appearance 5 Poems and songs 6 Thematic elements 7 Cinematic adaptations 8 External link

History

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

• Lorina Charlotte Liddell (aged 13)
• Alice Pleasance Liddell (aged 10)
• Edith Liddell (aged 8)

The journey had started at Folly Bridge near Oxford, England and ended five miles away in a village of Godstow. During the journey the Reverend Dodgson made up and told the girls a story, which he later developed into Alice's Adventures Underground which then became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

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

The plot

A small girl named Alice is bored while on a picnic with her sister. She find interest in a white rabbit, dressed in a topcoat and muttering "I'm late!", which she follows down a rabbit's hole. She drops down into dream underworld of paradox, the absurd and the improbable. As she attempts to follow the rabbit, she has several misadventures. She meets a group of small animals stranded in a sea of her own tears, then 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 some more odd creatures, until the story ends with the Knave of Hearts being put on trial for stealing some tarts, and Alice waking up underneath a tree back with her sister.

The Characters in order of appearance

• Alice
• The White Rabbit
• The Mouse[?]
• The Duck[?]
• Dodo
• Lory
• The Eaglet
• Bill the Lizard[?]
• The Caterpillar[?]
• The Footman[?]
• The Duchess[?]
• Cheshire Cat
• The March Hare
• The Hatter
• Dormouse[?]
• The King of Hearts[?]
• The Queen of Hearts[?]
• The Knave of Hearts[?]
• Gryphon
• The Mock Turtle[?]

Poems and songs

• "How doth the little crocodile..." (a parody of the Victorian-era child's rhyme, "How doth the little busy bee")
• "You are old, Father William..."
• The Duchess' lullaby: "Speak roughly to your little boy..."
• "Twinkle, twinkle little bat..." -a parody of Twinkle twinkle little star.
• The Lobster Quadrille
• "’Tis the voice of the lobster, I heard him declare..." -a parody of Tis the voice of the Sluggard.
• Turtle Soup
• "The Queen of Hearts..." -an actual nursery rhyme.
• The White Rabbit's evidence

Thematic elements

• Puns
• Games and riddles
• Nonsense
• Sexual undertones
• Psychedelic undertones

Alice has recently been seen in two comic book series by Alan Moore: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (in passing), and Lost Girls (as a grown up); a dark and bloody computer game: American McGee's Alice; and a Tom Waits album. Allusions to Alice's adventures are also rife in the film The Matrix.

Cinematic adaptations

• Alice in Wonderland (1933 movie) - motion picture
• Alice in Wonderland (1951 movie)[?] - animated movie
• Alice in Wonderland in Paris[?] - animated movie
• Alice in Wonderland (1985 movie) - motion picture
• Alice in Wonderland (1999 movie)[?] - made for television movie

External link

• Full text available in multiple formats (http://pdreader.org/details.asp?id=11)

Caterpillar using a hookah; an illustration by John Tenniel