The Annotated Alice

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland first came into being, in a rudimentary form, on July 4, 1862, during a rowing trip up the River Thames, near Oxford, by a party of five--Charles Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll), the Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and three young girls: Lorina Liddell, Alice Liddell and Edith Liddell. Lewis Carroll often entertained the three sisters with extemporous stories, especially on these rowing expeditions. During this particular outing, Carroll related the beginning of the narrative he originally called, "Alice's Adventures Underground." Ten-year-old Alice Liddell, the eponym of Wonderland's Alice, was so taken with the tale that she insisted Carroll should write it down--which fortunately, he eventually did. This is how Carroll himself recounted the way it all happened in an article called "Alice on the Stage," written twenty-five years after the event:

"Many a day we rowed together on that quiet stream--the three little maidens and I--and many a fairy tale had been extemporized for their benefit...yet none of these many tales got written down: they lived and died, like summer midges, each in its own golden afternoon until there came a day when, as it chanced, one of my little listeners petitioned that the tale might be written out for her. That was many a year ago, but I distinctly remember, now as I write, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards. And so, to please a child I loved (I don't remember any other motive), I printed in manuscript, and illustrated with my own crude designs--designs that rebelled against every law of anatomy or art (for I had never had a lesson in drawing)--the book which I have just had published in facsimile. In writing it out, I added many fresh ideas, which seemed to grow of themselves upon the original stock; and many more added themselves when, years afterwards, I wrote it all over again for publication."

This is the way that Alice, as an adult, remembered it:

"Nearly all of Alice's Adventures Underground was told on that blazing summer afternoon with the heat haze shimmering over the meadows where the party landed to shelter for a while in the shadow cast by the haycocks near Godstow. I think the stories he told us that afternoon must have been better than usual, because I have such a distinct recollection of the expedition, and also, on the next day I started to pester him to write down the story for me, which I had never done before. It was due to my 'going on, going on' and importunity that, after saying he would think about it, he eventually gave the hesitating promise which started him writing it down at all."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland begin memorably, with Alice chasing off after the White Rabbit and then falling down a curiously wide and deep hole. One thing that is immediately noticeable, if you compare the photo of the "real Alice," Alice Liddell, with Tenniel's illustrations, is how different the two Alices look. Actually, Carroll himself had recommended another girl, a Mary Hilton Badcock, as a model for the Alice illustrations, but Tenniel seems not to have taken his suggestion. Carroll complained that:

"Mr. Tenniel is the only artist, who has drawn for me, who has resolutely refused to use a model, and declared he no more needed one than I should need a multiplication table to work a mathematical problem! I venture to think that he was mistaken and that for want of a model, he drew several pictures of "Alice" entirely out of proportion--head decidedly too large and feet decidedly too small."

So Alice's appearance the product of Tenniel's imagination, but Carroll, of course, had complete creative control over her personality. This the way that he described her in his article, "Alice on the Stage":

"What wert thou, dream-Alice, in thy father's eyes? How shall he picture thee? Loving, first, loving and gentle: loving as a dog (forgive the prosaic simile, but I know no earthly love so pure and perfect), and gentle as a fawn: then courteous--courteous to all, high or low, grand of grotesque, King or Caterpillar, even as though she were herself a King's daughter, and her clothing of wrought gold: then trustful, ready to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that utter trust that only dreamers know; and lastly, curious--wildly curious, and with eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names--empty words signifying nothing!"

In this classic scene, alice drinks a mysterious but not unpleasant tasting liquid that causes her to shrink down to a height of ten inches. As the following excerpt shows, she does at least take the precaution of checking whether it's labeled as a poison or not before quaffing it down; Martin Gardner's note on this passage is very interesting:

"It was all very well to say "Drink me," but the wise Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said, "and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not" ; for she had read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that, if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked "poison," it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner of later."

"The 'nice little stories,' Charles Lovett reminds me, were not so nice. They were the traditional fairy tales, filled with episodes of horror and usually containing a pious moral. By doing away with morals, The Alice books opened up a new genre of fiction for children."

In chapter two, after crying a pool of tears over her predictament now that she was "rather more than nine feet high," Alice again encounters the White Rabbit, "splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid-gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other." He is still in a great hurry and worried about being late. In his article "Alice on the Stage," Carrol described the White Rabbit's personality this way:

"And the White Rabbit, what of him? Was he framed on the "Alice" lines, or meant as a contrast? As a contrast, distinctly. For her "youth," "audacity," "vigour," and "swift directness of purpose," read "elderly," "timid," "feeble," and nervously shilly-shallying," and you will get something of what I meant him to be. I think the White Rabbit should wear spectacles. I am sure his voice should quaver, and his knees quiver, and his whole air suggest a total inability to say "bo" to a goose!"

Chapter two of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has the first of the many nonsense poems that appear in the book. The poem and Martin Gardner's explanatory note follow below:

"How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the NIle
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!"

"Most of the poems in the two Alice books are parodies of poems or popular songs that were well known to Carroll's contemporary readers. With few exceptions the originals have now been forgotten, their titles kept alive only by the fact that Carroll chose to poke fun at them. Because much of the wit of a burleque is missed if one is not familiar with what is being caracatured, all of the originals will be reprinted in this edition.

Here we have a skillful parody of the best-known poem of Isaac Watts (1674-1748), English theologian and writer of such well-known hymn as O God, our help in ages past." Watt's poem, "Against Idleness and Mischief" (from his Divine Songs for Children, 1715), is reprinted below in its entirety:


How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

How skillfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labour or of skill,
I would be busy too;
Fof Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,
Let my first years be passed,
That I may give for every day
Some good account at last.

Carroll has chosen the lazy, slow-moving crocodile as a creature far removed from the rapid-flying, ever-busy bee."