Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (also known as Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a little girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the original edition.

The novel received positive reviews upon release. It is now one of the best-known works of Victorian literature; its narrative, structure, characters and imagery have had a wide influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.

Mathematics

Mathematics and logic are central to Alice. As Carroll was a mathematician at Christ Church, it has been suggested that there are many references and mathematical concepts in both this story and Through the Looking-Glass. Literary scholar Melanie Bayley asserts in the New Scientist magazine that Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland in its final form as a satire on mid-19th century mathematics.

Eating and devouring

Carina Garland notes how the world is "expressed via representations of food and appetite", naming Alice's frequent desire for consumption (of both food and words), her 'Curious Appetites'. Often, the idea of eating coincides to make gruesome images. After the riddle "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?", the Hatter claims that Alice might as well say, "I see what I eat...I eat what I see" and so the riddle's solution, put forward by Boe Birns, could be that "A raven eats worms; a writing desk is worm-eaten"; this idea of food encapsulates idea of life feeding on life itself, for the worm is being eaten and then becomes the eater—a horrific image of mortality.

Nina Auerbach discusses how the novel revolves around eating and drinking which "motivates much of her [Alice's] behaviour", for the story is essentially about things "entering and leaving her mouth." The animals of Wonderland are of particular interest, for Alice's relation to them shifts constantly because, as Lovell-Smith states, Alice's changes in size continually reposition her in the food chain, serving as a way to make her acutely aware of the 'eat or be eaten' attitude that permeates Wonderland.

Nonsense

Alice is an example of the literary nonsense genre. According to Humphrey Carpenter, Alice brand of nonsense embraces the nihilistic and existential. Characters in nonsensical episodes such as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, in which it is always the same time, go on posing paradoxes that are never resolved.

Rules and games

Wonderland is a rule-bound world, but its rules are not those of our world. The literary scholar Daniel Bivona writes that Alice is characterised by "gamelike social structures". She trusts in instructions from the beginning, drinking from the bottle labelled "drink me" after recalling, during her descent, that children who do not follow the rules often meet terrible fates. Unlike the creatures of Wonderland, who approach their world's wonders uncritically, Alice continues to look for rules as the story progresses. Gillian Beer suggests that Alice looks for rules to soothe her anxiety, while Carroll may have hunted for rules because he struggled with the implications of the non-Euclidean geometry then in development.

Illustrations

thumb|left|upright|[[John Tenniel, who was already famous as the chief cartoonist for Punch, was approached by Carroll to provide the illustrations for the published novel.]]

The manuscript was illustrated by Carroll, who added 37 illustrations—printed in a facsimile edition in 1887. John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the 1865 published version of the book. The first print run was destroyed (or sold in the US) at Carroll's request because Tenniel was dissatisfied with the printing quality. There are only 22 known first edition copies in existence.

thumb|upright|[[Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)|Alice by Tenniel, one of his 42 illustrations for the novel.]]

Tenniel's illustrations of Alice do not portray the real Alice Liddell, who had dark hair and a short fringe. In 1911, Harry Theaker, with Tenniel's approval, was commissioned by Macmillan to colour sixteen of Tenniel's plates for an Alice edition and her dress was blue – and has remained so in the popular mind ever since. Alice has provided a challenge for other illustrators, including those of 1907 by Charles Pears and the full series of colour plates and line-drawings by Harry Rountree published in the (inter-War) Children's Press (Glasgow) edition. Other significant illustrators include: Arthur Rackham (1907), Willy Pogany (1929), Mervyn Peake (1946), Ralph Steadman (1967), Salvador Dalí (1969), Graham Overden (1969), Max Ernst (1970), Peter Blake (1970), Tove Jansson (1977), Anthony Browne (1988), Helen Oxenbury (1999), and Lisbeth Zwerger (1999). To mark the 200th anniversary of Tenniel's birth, in 2020 Chris Riddell provided illustrations for a new edition of the novel.

Publication history

Carroll first met Alexander Macmillan, a high-powered London publisher, on 19 October 1863. His firm, Macmillan Publishers, agreed to publish Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by sometime in 1864. Carroll financed the initial print run, possibly because it gave him more editorial authority than other financing methods. He managed publication details such as typesetting and engaged illustrators and translators.

Macmillan had published The Water-Babies, also a children's fantasy, in 1863, and suggested its design as a basis for Alice. Carroll saw a specimen copy in May 1865. 2,000 copies were printed by July, but Tenniel objected to their quality, and Carroll instructed Macmillan to halt publication so they could be reprinted. In August, he engaged Richard Clay as an alternative printer for a new run of 2,000. The reprint cost £600, paid entirely by Carroll. He received the first copy of Clay's edition on 9 November 1865.

thumb|upright=1.2|Opening pages of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, [[Macmillan Publishers, London]]

Macmillan finally published the new edition, printed by Richard Clay, in November 1865. Carroll requested a red binding, deeming it appealing to young readers. A new edition, released in December 1865 for the Christmas market but carrying an 1866 date, was quickly printed. The text blocks of the original edition were removed from the binding and sold with Carroll's permission to the New York publishing house of D. Appleton & Company. The binding for the Appleton Alice was identical to the 1866 Macmillan Alice, except for the publisher's name at the foot of the spine. The title page of the Appleton Alice was an insert cancelling the original Macmillan title page of 1865 and bearing the New York publisher's imprint and the date 1866. Queen Victoria was also an avid reader of the book. She reportedly enjoyed Alice enough that she asked for Carroll's next book, which turned out to be a mathematical treatise; Carroll denied this. The book has never been out of print.

Publication timeline

right|thumb|300px|In 1907, the [[copyright on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland expired in the UK, entering the tale into the public domain. Since the story was intimately tied to the illustrations by Tenniel, new illustrated versions were then received with some significant objection by English reviewers. 42 years after its publication, some nine years after Carroll's death in January 1898.

1910: Published in Esperanto as La Aventuroj de Alicio en Mirlando, translated by E. L. Kearney.
1915: Alice Gerstenberg's stage adaptation premieres.
1928: The manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground written and illustrated by Carroll, which he had given to Alice Liddell, was sold at Sotheby's in London on 3 April. It was sold to Philip Rosenbach of Philadelphia for , a world record for the sale of a manuscript at the time; the buyer later presented it to the British Library (where the manuscript remains) as an appreciation for Britain's part in two World Wars.
1960: American writer Martin Gardner publishes a special edition, The Annotated Alice.
1988: Lewis Carroll and Anthony Browne, illustrator of an edition from Julia MacRae Books, win the Kurt Maschler Award.
1998: Carroll's own copy of Alice, one of only six surviving copies of the 1865 first edition, is sold at an auction for US$1.54 million to an anonymous American buyer, becoming the most expensive children's book (or 19th-century work of literature) ever sold to that point.
1999: Lewis Carroll and Helen Oxenbury, illustrators of an edition from Walker Books, win the Kurt Maschler Award for integrated writing and illustration.
2008: Folio publishes Alice's Adventures Under Ground facsimile edition (limited to 3,750 copies, boxed with The Original Alice pamphlet).
2009: Children's book collector and former American football player Pat McInally reportedly sold Alice Liddell's own copy at auction for US$115,000.

Reception

thumb|right|Alice in Wonderland (1879) by the artist [[George Dunlop Leslie. Exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, it depicts a mother reading the book to her child (whose light blue dress and white pinafore were inspired by Alice).]]

Alice was published to critical praise. One magazine declared it "exquisitely wild, fantastic, [and] impossible". In the late 19th century, Walter Besant wrote that Alice in Wonderland "was a book of that extremely rare kind which will belong to all the generations to come until the language becomes obsolete".

F. J. Harvey Darton argued in a 1932 book that Alice ended an era of didacticism in children's literature, inaugurating a new era in which writing for children aimed to "delight or entertain". In 2014, Robert McCrum named Alice "one of the best loved in the English canon" and called it "perhaps the greatest, possibly most influential, and certainly the most world-famous Victorian English fiction". Joe Sommerlad in The Independent writes that Roald Dahl "owes a debt to the "Drink Me" episode in Alice" in regard to Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine where the protagonist's grandmother drinks a potion and is blown up to the size of a farmhouse. The protagonist of the story, Alice, has been recognised as a cultural icon. In 2006, Alice in Wonderland was named among the icons of England in a public vote.

Adaptations and influence

Books for children in the Alice mould emerged as early as 1869 and continued to appear throughout the late 19th century. Released in 1903, the British silent film Alice in Wonderland was the first screen adaptation of the book.

In 2015, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst wrote in the Guardian,

Labelled "a dauntless, no-nonsense heroine" by the Guardian, 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. The book has inspired numerous film and television adaptations, which have multiplied, as the original work is now in the public domain in all jurisdictions. Musical works inspired by Alice include the Beatles's song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; songwriter John Lennon attributed the song's fantastical imagery to his reading of Carroll's books. Argentine prog-rock band Seru Giran used Alice as a metaphor to represent the political climate in Argentina during the 1970s in their song "Canción de Alicia en el país". A popular figure in Japan since the country opened up to the West in the late 19th century, Alice has been a popular subject for writers of manga and a source of inspiration for Japanese fashion, in particular Lolita fashion.

Live performance

thumb|right|upright=0.8|[[Maidie Andrews as Alice in the West End musical Alice in Wonderland]]

The first full major production was Alice in Wonderland, a musical play in London's West End by Henry Savile Clarke and Walter Slaughter, which premiered at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1886. Twelve-year-old actress Phoebe Carlo (the first to play Alice) was personally selected by Carroll for the role. Carroll attended a performance on 30 December 1886, writing in his diary that he enjoyed it. The musical was frequently revived during West End Christmas seasons during the four decades after its premiere, including a London production at the Globe Theatre in 1888, with Isa Bowman as Alice.

As the book and its sequel are Carroll's most widely recognised works, they have also inspired numerous live performances, including plays, operas, ballets, and traditional English pantomimes. These works range from fairly faithful adaptations to those that use the story as a basis for new works. Eva Le Gallienne's stage adaptation of the Alice books premiered on 12 December 1932 and ended its run in May 1933. The production was revived in New York in 1947 and 1982. A community theatre production of Alice was Olivia de Havilland's first foray onto the stage.

A dramatisation by Herbert M. Prentice premiered at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon in 1947, and was in turn adapted for television by John Glyn-Jones and shown by the BBC on Christmas Day 1948. The BBC screened another adaptation of Prentice's play in 1956. Joseph Papp staged Alice in Concert at the Public Theater in New York City in 1980. 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 adaptation, with song styles ranging the globe. The 2001 Adrian Mitchell play, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, is notable for adapting almost every scene from both books.

thumb|left|Production of Alice in Wonderland by the [[Kansas City Ballet in 2013]]

The 1992 musical theatre production Alice used both books as its inspiration. It also employs scenes with Carroll, 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.

Joseph Horovitz composed an Alice in Wonderland ballet commissioned by the London Festival Ballet in 1953. It was performed frequently in England and the US. A ballet by Christopher Wheeldon and Nicholas Wright commissioned for the Royal Ballet entitled Alice's Adventures in Wonderland premiered in February 2011 at the Royal Opera House in London. The ballet was based on the novel Wheeldon grew up reading as a child and is generally faithful to the original story, although some critics claimed it may have been too faithful.

Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland premiered in 2007 at the Bavarian State Opera and was hailed as World Premiere of the Year by the German opera magazine Opernwelt. Gerald Barry's 2016 one-act opera, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, first staged in 2020 at the Royal Opera House, is a conflation of the two Alice books. In 2022, the Opéra national du Rhin performed the ballet Alice, with a score by Philip Glass, in Mulhouse, France.

Commemoration

Following the establishment of a memorial fund in 1932 to celebrate the centenary of Carroll's birth, characters from the book were depicted in the stained glass windows of his hometown church, All Saints', in Daresbury, Cheshire, which was dedicated in 1935. Another commemoration of Carroll's work in his home county of Cheshire is the granite sculpture The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, located in Warrington. International works based on the book include the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, New York, and the Alice statue in Rymill Park, Adelaide, Australia.

In 2015, Alice characters were featured on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of the book. In 2021, the Royal Mint issued their first Alice's Adventures in Wonderland commemorative coin collection, including a £5 coin featuring Alice and the Cheshire Cat (inspired by Tenniel's original illustration).

File:Daresbury window 5.jpg|Stained glass window of Alice characters (King and Queen of Hearts) in All Saints' church, Daresbury, Cheshire

File:Statue of Alice - Rymill Park - Adelaide.jpg|Statue of Alice in Rymill Park, Adelaide, South Australia

File:Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.jpg|Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park, New York

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References

Works cited

External links

Text

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865, first issue, first edition, bound in original red cloth) with forty-two illustrations by John Tennielfull colour scan from Indiana University Digital Library
Alice's Adventures Under Ground (1865), Carroll's manuscript later reworked into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1866) (with forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel)full colour scan from University of Southern California Digital Library

Audio

Archival materials

Cassady Lewis Carroll Collection from University of Southern California Digital Library
To all child-readers of "Alice's adventures in Wonderland" (Christmas 1871)
Alice in Wonderland: coloured lantern slides, 1910-1919

::"3 square blue boxes, each with 8 glass lantern slides and leaflet with abridged excerpt from 'Alice', 24 slides & 3 leaflets all"

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