Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland follows the curious journey of a young girl named Alice, who falls down a rabbit hole into a bizarre and magical world. The story unfolds through a series of episodic adventures, each more peculiar than the last.
This book has arguably lent more metaphors to the common vernacular than any other book, partly because this remains the most imaginative and accessible book for young children. A few are:
- Mad as a hatter
- Fall down the rabbit hole
- Cheshire cat grin
- Curiouser and Curiouser
- Chasing a White Rabbit
- Off with his/her head
When reading a little about Alice Liddell, I realized that I haven’t read this since I was a child, and even then I probably read an abridged version. I set out to rectify this, and this was a treat!
Carroll was his pen-name; his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and he was a mathematics professor at Oxford. Alice Liddell was the daughter of a friend of his, and she is the inspiration for the titular Alice. Several aspects of the story either mirror or satirize events from the time the book was written.