We're All Mad Here - The Alice In Wonderland Page

We're All Mad Here - The Alice In Wonderland Page

We often imagine escaping to another world. One where we don't have to deal with the drama of our day to day lives. One where the fantastic can be real and the real can be fantastic. Like Alice...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the start of the story of a young child named Alice who dreamed of getting away. She dreamed of smoking caterpillars, smiling cats, and infants that turn into pigs. Written by English author, deacon, photographer, and mathematician Lewis Carroll (born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a story that, along with Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, the sequel to the story, has captured the hearts of children and adults alike with it's anthropomorphic creatures and objects since it was first published in 1865.

The original story, at the time called Alice's Adventures Under Ground was written and illustrated entirely by Carroll. He wrote the book after telling the three daughters of Henry George Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church of which Carroll was a reverend, the story of a young girl named Alice who chases a white rabbit with a pocket watch and stumbles down a hole into a magical world of wonder, and the adventures she finds there. The girls (Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell) loved the story and Alice asked for it to be written down for her. Before giving Alice the story Carroll was already preparing a copy to be published that would be almost double the length of the version he gave the ten year old girl on whom it is believed he based the character in the book.

Today there have been over 100 editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and it has never been out of print. Not to mention the large number of film and theater adaptations of both books in the series. There have currently been over 20 television and cinematic adaptations of the books, and another is set to be released by Disney Studios in 2010 directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.

One of the most famous film versions of the Alice stories is the 1951 animated comedy musical Alice in Wonderland produced by Walt Disney. The film featured a combination of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, and is often the reason many people get confused about what characters belong to which story. For instance Tweedledee and Tweedledum are not in the first story, though many people believe they are, nor are the talking flowers. One of the things that makes the animated Disney film so special is the determination of Walt Disney himself to retain the magic and fantasy of the books by hiring songwriters and composers to create a soundtrack using the verses and poems written by Carroll found in the books.

The stories of the little girl Alice and the amazing adventures she had in her magical and sometimes confusing world have been cherished for generations, and will continue to be loved for years to come.

• Complete Text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

• Myth and Legend in Children's Literature

• In the Shadow of the DreamChild

• Who Was Lewis Carroll Really?

• The Photography of Lewis Carroll

• Salvador Dali's Illustrations of Alice

• A Trip To Wonderland, The Nursery 'Alice'

• Alice Liddell's Ties to the Alice in the Story

• The Lewis Carroll Scrapbook Collection

• A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition