If you read this as a child, saw Disney’s version, which takes bits from both, or seen any of the other cartoons then you must read them again as an adult – you’ll get so much more out of them. Just the precision of language alone is a joy – something the films can’t give you in the same way, and if it’s only the films you’ve seen then you don’t know Alice at all and have missed a treat.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass Synopsis
This is the Penguin English Library Edition of A lice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. ' Curiouser and curiouser! cried Alice (she was so surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). Now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Goodbye, feet! ' 'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole ...without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,' wrote Lewis Carroll, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell. His dream worlds of nonsensical Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking Glass kingdom depict order turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig, time is abandoned at a disorderly tea-party and a chaotic game of chess makes a seven-year-old girl a Queen. But amongst the anarchic humour and sparkling word play, puzzles and riddles, are poignant moments of nostalgia for lost childhood. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
Lewis Carroll's real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was born on 27th January 1832 at Daresbury in Cheshire. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford University and later became a mathematics lecturer there. He wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872) for the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church. He was very fond of puzzles and some readers have found mathematical jokes and codes hidden in his Alice books. His other works include Phantasmagoria and Other Poems (1869), The Hunting of the Snark (1876), Rhyme? And Reason? (1882), The Game of Logic (1887) and Sylvie and Bruno (1889, 1893). Dodgson was also an influential photographer. He died on 14th January 1898.
