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ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. A Christmas Carol
  2. Adam Bede
  3. Alice in Wonderland
  4. All's Well That Ends Well
  5. A Midsummer Night's Dream
  6. A Modest Proposal
  7. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  8. An Ideal Husband
  9. Antony and Cleopatra
  10. A Passage to India
  11. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  12. Arms and the Man
  13. A Room With A View
  14. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
  15. A Study in Scarlet
  16. As You Like It
  17. A Tale of a Tub
  18. A Tale of Two Cities
  19. A Woman of No Importance
  20. Barnaby Rudge
  21. Beowulf
  22. Bleak House
  23. Book of Common Prayer
  24. Candida
  25. Captains Courageous
  26. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
  27. Clarissa
  28. Coriolanus
  29. Daniel Deronda
  30. David Copperfield
  31. Dombey and Son
  32. Don Juan
  33. Emma
  34. Finnegans Wake
  35. Four Quartets
  36. Frankenstein
  37. Great Expectations
  38. Gulliver's Travels
  39. Hamlet
  40. Hard Times
  41. Howards End
  42. Ivanhoe
  43. Jane Eyre
  44. Julius Caesar
  45. Kim
  46. King James Version of the Bible
  47. King Lear
  48. King Solomon's Mines
  49. Lady Chatterley's Lover
  50. Lady Windermere's Fan
  51. Leviathan
  52. Little Dorrit
  53. Love's Labour's Lost
  54. Macbeth
  55. Major Barbara
  56. Mansfield Park
  57. Martin Chuzzlewit
  58. Measure for Measure
  59. Middlemarch
  60. Moll Flanders
  61. Mrs. Dalloway
  62. Mrs. Warren's Profession
  63. Much Ado About Nothing
  64. Murder in the Cathedral
  65. Nicholas Nickleby
  66. Northanger Abbey
  67. Nostromo
  68. Ode on a Grecian Urn
  69. Oliver Twist
  70. Othello
  71. Our Mutual Friend
  72. Pamela or Virtue Rewarded
  73. Paradise Lost
  74. Paradise Regained
  75. Peregrine Pickle
  76. Persuasion
  77. Peter Pan
  78. Pride and Prejudice
  79. Pygmalion
  80. Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  81. Robinson Crusoe
  82. Rob Roy
  83. Roderick Random
  84. Romeo and Juliet
  85. Saint Joan
  86. Salomé
  87. Sense and Sensibility
  88. She Stoops to Conquer
  89. Silas Marner
  90. Sons and Lovers
  91. The Alchemist
  92. The Beggar's Opera
  93. The Canterbury Tales
  94. The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes
  95. The Castle of Otranto
  96. The Comedy of Errors
  97. The Dunciad
  98. The Elder Statesman
  99. The Faerie Queene
  100. The Happy Prince and Other Tales
  101. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
  102. The Hound of the Baskervilles
  103. The Importance of Being Earnest
  104. The Jungle Book
  105. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
  106. The Man Who Would Be King
  107. The Master of Ballantrae
  108. The Merchant of Venice
  109. The Merry Wives of Windsor
  110. The Mill on the Floss
  111. The Mystery of Edwin Drood
  112. The Nigger of the Narcissus
  113. The Old Curiosity Shop
  114. The Pickwick Papers
  115. The Picture of Dorian Gray
  116. The Pilgrim's Progress
  117. The Rape of the Lock
  118. The Second Jungle Book
  119. The Secret Agent
  120. The Sign of Four
  121. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  122. The Tempest
  123. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
  124. The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  125. The Vicar of Wakefield
  126. The Waste Land
  127. The Winter's Tale
  128. Timon of Athens
  129. Titus Andronicus
  130. To the Lighthouse
  131. Treasure Island
  132. Troilus and Cressida
  133. Twelfth Night, or What You Will
  134. Typhoon
  135. Ulysses
  136. Vanity Fair
  137. Volpone
  138. Wuthering Heights

 

 
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LITERARY MASTERPIECES
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Alice in Wonderland)
John Tenniel's illustration for "A Mad Tea-Party", 1865
John Tenniel's illustration for "A Mad Tea-Party", 1865
Illustration by Arthur Rackham
Illustration by Arthur Rackham
Facsimile page from Alice's Adventures Under Ground
Facsimile page from Alice's Adventures Under Ground

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children's literature by the English mathematician and author, 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 talking playing cards and anthropomorphic creatures.

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 adults.

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.

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:

  • 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 Folly 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 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 MS 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 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. 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 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

Folio Society Edition (1962)
Folio Society Edition (1962)
  • 1865: Alice has its first American printing. [1]
  • 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.
  • 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 summary

A girl named Alice is bored while on a picnic with her older sister. She finds interest in a passing white rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat and muttering "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!", whom she follows down a rabbit-hole, she finds herself floating down into a dream underworld. As she attempts to follow the rabbit, she has several adventures. She grows to gigantic size and shrinks to a fraction of her original height; meets a group of small animals stranded in a sea of her own previously shed tears; gets trapped in the rabbit's house when she enlarges herself again; meets a baby which changes into a pig, and a cat which disappears leaving only his smile behind; goes to a never-ending tea party; goes to the shore and meets a Gryphon and a Mock Turtle; and attends the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who has been accused of stealing tarts. Eventually, Alice wakes up back with her sister.

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"
  • Games, learning the rules
  • Nonsense
  • Logic/illogic, including asymmetrical logic
  • Knowledge
  • Identity
  • Meaning
  • Death
  • Order/disorder, including creating order in an unruly world
  • Madness
  • Growing up/perils of childhood
  • Education

Language/word play

  • Puns
  • Parody and satire
  • In-jokes about the Liddell family and the Oxford community
  • Parable
  • Riddles

Other motifs

  • Dreams and nightmares
  • Size change
  • Eating
  • Drinking

Characters in order of appearance

The Caterpillar using a hookah; an illustration by John Tenniel
The Caterpillar using a hookah; an illustration by John Tenniel
  • Alice
  • Alice's Sister
  • The White Rabbit
  • Alice's Cat, Dinah
  • The Mouse
  • The Duck
  • The Dodo
  • The Lory
  • The Eaglet
  • Bill the Lizard
  • The Caterpillar
  • The Fish-Footman
  • The Frog-Footman
  • The Duchess
  • The Baby
  • The Cook
  • The Cheshire Cat
  • The March Hare
  • The Hatter
  • The Dormouse
  • Two, Five & Seven (cards)
  • The King of Hearts
  • The Queen of Hearts
  • The Executioner
  • The Knave of Hearts
  • The Gryphon
  • The Mock Turtle
  • The Jurymen

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).

Contents

Alice in Wonderland sculpture in New York City's Central Park
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, 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.

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 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. It is also, coincidentally or not, a street name for heroin.

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 never 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.

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!"

Cinematic adaptations

  • Alice in Wonderland (1903 film) - the first Alice movie by Cecil M. Hepworth. Parts of the movie are lost but what remains is available as a bonus feature on the 1966 BBC DVD
  • Alice in Wonderland (1966 film)
Alice in Disney's animated version
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:

  • Alice in Wonderland (1933 film) - motion picture
  • Alice in Wonderland (1951 film) - motion picture produced by Lou Bunin, blending live actors with stop-motion animated puppets, nicknamed "the lost Alice". Suppressed by Disney to avoid competition with their release the same year
  • Alice of Wonderland in Paris - 1966 animated movie
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972 film) - motion picture
  • Alice in Wonderland (1981 film) ("Алиса в Стране Чудес" in Russian) - soviet animated motion picture by Efim Pruzhanskiy
  • Alice in Wonderland (1985 film) - motion picture
  • The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland - 1987 animated adaptation from Nelvana Limited
  • Alice (1988 film) - animated motion picture by Jan Švankmajer
  • Alice in Wonderland (1999 film) - made for television movie
  • Resident Evil - An action/sci-fi based on a video game series of the same name. The film centres on a girl named Alice who travels underground to face a supercomputer known as "The Red Queen".
  • Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll - 2006 yet-unrated short-film series by Marilyn Manson
  • Alice (2007 film) - based on the horror video game American McGee's Alice, in which Alice (Sarah Michelle Gellar) appears in a nightmare world
  • Malice in Sunderland - this 2007 film stars Mischa Barton as an embittered, adult version of Alice.

This webpage has a considerable list of cinematic adaptations with appropriate reviews. This webpage has short reviews of various movies and books that the Alice books have spawned.

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 adaptions 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. 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.

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.

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 [1]. 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]

The book was banned in China in 1931 because the talking animals were considered blasphemous to Chinese beliefs.[citation needed]

Genre: fantasy or horror?

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.
"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 Kafkaesque 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) 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. Some scholars have pointed out, however, that many of these 'nightmarish' incidents and feelings notably resemble the confusion and lack of control a young child experiences at the hands of adults (well-meaning or not).

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 enjoyment, the Hatter exists in a never ending tea party because he got in a fight with Time and it imprisoned him in six o'clock, 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-labour.

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.

American McGee, a video and computer game designer, released in the year 2000 a horror game entitled American McGee's Alice. In an interview, American McGee defended his dark interpretation of the novels, claiming that Alice in Wonderland is a very dark tale to begin with.

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. it has also influenced many Japanese manga comics, most notable Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, by CLAMP. A recent comic book adaptation of Alice in Wonderland was also written and illustrated by Rod Espinosa and published by Antarctic Press. Using a blended style of Japanese Manga and Disney Animation, Rod Espinosa's New Alice in Wonderland returns to the original's roots and follows the Lewis Carroll classic very faithfully.

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.

Media

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, read aloud by the LibriVox project:
  • Chapter 1 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 2 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 3 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 4 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 5 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 6 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 7 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 8 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 9 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 10 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 11 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Chapter 12 (file info) — play in browser (beta)
  • Problems playing the files? See media help.

See also

  • Alice in Wonderland syndrome
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  • Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit'
  • Works influenced by Alice in Wonderland

References

  • Website devoted to Alice in Wonderland and its derivations
  • Website for The Eighth Square theatrical production

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Additional information

  • Lenny's Alice in Wonderland site contains background info, pictures, full texts, story origins, literary analyses, and more.

Online texts

  • Project Gutenberg:
    • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - 1920 New York publication, HTML
    • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - plain text
    • Alice's Adventures Under Ground - HTML with facsimiles of original manuscript pages, and illustrations by Carroll
  • University of Adelaide:Text with illustrations by Tenniel
  • Art Passions: Text with illustrations by Arthur Rackham
  • GASL.org: First editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There With 92 Illustrations by Tenniel, 1866/1872.
  • British Library:Original manuscript and drawings by Lewis Carrol (requires Flash)
  • Indiana.edu: Text only
  • GASL.org: Text with illustrations by Tenniel (PDF, coloured edition in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library)
  • Duchs.com: Text only (RSS version)
  • PublicLiterature.org: Chapter indexed, Searchable text
  • Sabiana: Text with illustrations by Tenniel, with a commentary by Dr Marc Edmund Jones
  • DjVu editions: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (colour illustrations, searchable, several formats)

Illustrations

  • LCSNA: List of illustrators of "Alice" on the web
  • Lauren Harman's "Alice in Wonderland" page includes a long list of illustrators with samples for each
  • Scans of illustrations by Gordon Robinson
  • DocOzone: Illustrations by Arthur Rackham (1907)
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