Novel
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll · 1865
Opening lines
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A little girl, bored beside her sister on a bank, sees a white rabbit pass by pulling a watch out of its waistcoat; she follows it down a rabbit hole and falls a long way. Below, she drinks and eats things that make her grow and shrink, swims in the pool of her own tears, attends a never-ending tea party at a hatter's where a riddle without an answer is posed, and plays croquet with flamingos for mallets and hedgehogs for balls. A queen orders executions that no one carries out. A trial opens, where witnesses are called.
Context
The story was improvised on 4 July 1862 during a rowing-boat outing, for three sisters, the second of whom gave her first name to the heroine. Its author copied it out and illustrated it by hand for the child, then had it printed at his own expense in 1865 with engravings by John Tenniel, a Punch illustrator: the two thousand copies of the first printing were recalled at the latter's request, and the unbound sheets sold to a New York publisher. About twenty survive. The children's literature of the time aimed above all to teach moral lessons, and the book parodies the moralising texts that children were made to learn.
Who it is for
Under two hundred pages, translated into French more than a dozen times; its wordplay and its parodies of texts learned at school resist translation.
Prizes and reception
Never out of print since 1865, and the first printing, withdrawn from sale, is now rarer than a Shakespeare First Folio.
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