Happy 150th to Alice in Wonderland, the mother of all quirky books

It's 150 years today since Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published, three years after Charles Dodgson told the story to the Liddell sisters as they boated down the Thames. Together with its sequel Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, it is now known by all of us as Alice in Wonderland, and by me as one of my favourite books of all time.

For the occasion, I thought I'd republish the love letter to Alice I wrote for a Quirky Books series we ran on our website many years ago, which I called:

The mother of all quirky books

Because of everyone who's loved it or borrowed from it, from Virginia Woolf to the Jefferson Airplane; because Wonderland is where surrealistic starts; because the characters play croquet with flamingos for mallets and don't follow the rules; because the logic is faultless but illogical; because it celebrates absurdity; because of "Contrariwise" and "Off with their heads!"; because Alice wants to know, was she in the Red King's dream or was he in hers; and because it's funny.

Nearly everyone read, or had read to them, the Alice books as a child. Some people were delighted, others frightened or bewildered. But whether you loved it or hated it, it's worth taking another look. Alice is a fairy tale, perhaps the most original and imaginative fairy tale ever. Some parts are grim and disturbing, some are comic and demented. The "beasts", whether chess pieces or mock turtles, all remind us of someone we know. The heroine is undaunted, incurably curious, and, deservedly, she wins a crown at the end.

Try The Annotated Alice, an oversized, complete text version of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking glass with the original John Tenniel illustrations (surely half the charm of the book) and an introduction and running commentary by Martin Gardner, who was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Alice and who loved mathematical puzzles as much as Charles Dodgson -- for many years he wrote a column on them for Scientific American. Gardner knew it was important not to take Alice too seriously, but he rightly saw that no joke is funny if you don't see the point. He quotes the original versions of the many poems Carroll lampoons, reports on the discovery of a note in which Carroll signed himself "the White Knight", reprints French and German translations of Jabberwocky and, true to his mathematical origins, maps out the chess game for us.

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying, " she said: "One can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

 Go ask Alice, indeed.


Author: Karen Craig, Reading Engagement Specialist