Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when it was first published in 1865, was an immediate success, and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, appearing six years later, only cemented Lewis Carroll’s renown. Carroll’s sense of the absurd and his amazing gift for games of logic and language have secured for the Alice books a time-honored spot in the hearts of adults and children alike.

Alice’s surreal adventures begin when she follows a frantically late White Rabbit down a hole into the magical world of Wonderland. As she tries to find her way home, she meets a variety of weird and wonderful creatures, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the ever-smiling Cheshire Cat, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, and The March Hare, Mad Hatter, and Dormouse, who invite Alice to the strangest tea-party she has ever attended. Her final obstacle is the brutal and bellowing Queen of Hearts, who, along with her enchanted deck of playing cards, tricks Alice into playing a life-and-death game of croquet.

Alice continues her adventures in Through the Looking-Glass, which is loosely based on a game of chess and includes Carroll’s famous poem “Jabberwocky.”

Throughout her fantastic journeys, Alice manages to retain her reason, humor, and sense of justice. She has grown up to become one of the great characters of imaginative literature—as immortal as Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, Captain Ahab, Sherlock Holmes, and Dorothy Gale of Kansas.


An writer, artist, and critic, Tan Lin is the author of two books of poetry, Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe, and BlipSoak01. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at New Jersey City University.

The questions that Alice asks are not answered by the animals in Wonderland nor by anyone after she wakens. It is likely that her questions don’t have answers or that there are no right questions to ask. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass remain the most prophetic of the nineteenth century’s anti-narratives, inverted quest romances, circular mathematical treatises on the illogical logic of forgetting one’s desires. They display a logic that the child must master in order to grow up.
—from the Introduction by Tan Lin


Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on January 27, 1832, in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. Young Charles had a sharp intellect and, tutored by his father, was well ahead of the other students when he enrolled in grade school. After graduation from Christ Church college of Oxford University, he taught mathematics and logic at Christ Church. In 1856, he created the pseudonym “Lewis Carroll” (versions of his first and middle names in reverse order). Throughout his career, he signed his mathematical works Charles Dodgson and his literary works Lewis Carroll. Carroll never married, but led a charitable, productive life unshaken by the political and social upheavals of the day. His more than 300 published works comprise poetry, mathematics, logic, and his beloved children’s stories. Lewis Carroll died in Guildford, England, on January 14, 1898.