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Adventures in Wonderland
On the “golden afternoon” of July 4th, 1862, a young mathematician named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) told a story to three sisters as they glided down the Thames River in Oxford. The Liddell sisters, ages eight to thirteen, were accustomed to Charles’ inventive stories, and when ten year old Alice demanded that he tell them a story on that day, it was one that found her falling down a rabbit hole.
Years later, a grown Alice wrote that the tale told that day “must have been better than usual” and that “on the next day, I started to pester him to write down the story for me which I had never done before.” Two and half years later, he delivered the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground to her, illustrated with his own drawings.* More than a century and a half later, the story of an inquisitive little girl adrift in a land of nonsense continues to spark the imagination of young and old alike.
*Cohen, M. N. (1996). Lewis Carroll: a biography. New York: A.A. Knopf.
To learn more about Wonderland, click on the button below and take a look at this presentation created for the library:
The Original Stories by Lewis Carroll
The Art of Alice
The world of Wonderland has inspired countless artists since John Tenniel's first illustrations were published, including Salvador Dali, Ralph Steadman, Arthur Rackham, Yayoi Kusama, and more. Explore illustrated editions from all around the world!
Wonderland in Film
If you choose to visit Wonderland in film, there is nearly no end to the number of versions out there, all of them attempting to capture the weird and wonderful world dreamt up by Lewis Carroll. Read about eight legendary and very different interpretations of the story, selected by the British Film Institute.
Wonderland Expanded
Since Alice first fell down the rabbit hole, there have been many authors, film makers, and video game designers who have ventured to follow her. These stories expand on the magical world of Lewis Carroll, and sometimes even imagine new adventures for Alice Liddell.
This bestselling trilogy re-imagines the entire history of Wonderland! When Alyss Heart, newly orphaned heir to the Wonderland throne, flees through the Pool of Tears to escape her murderous Aunt Redd, she finds herself lost and alone in Victorian London. Befriended by an aspiring author named Lewis Carrol, Alyss tells the violent, heartbreaking story of her young life. Alyss trusts this author to tell the truth so that someone, somewhere will find her and bring her home. But he gets the story all wrong. He even spells her name incorrectly!
The Looking Glass Wars
by Frank Beddor
After Alice
by Gregory Maguire
The bestselling author of Wicked, Gregory Maguire, turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings — and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll's enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice's mentioned briefly in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late — and tumbles down the rabbit hole herself.
Heartless
by Marissa Meyer
Long before she was the terror of Wonderland—the infamous Queen of Hearts—she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love.
Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland, and a favorite of the unmarried King of Hearts, but her interests lie elsewhere. A talented baker, all she wants is to open a shop with her best friend. But according to her mother, such a goal is unthinkable for the young woman who could be the next queen.
The New York Times-bestselling author's prequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The Looking Glass House
by Vanessa Tait
Vanessa Tait, great-granddaughter of the Alice who inspired Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, tells the fascinating story of the childhood classic's strange beginnings through the eyes of a naive and deceived governess.
Oxford, 1862. As Mary Prickett takes up her post as governess to the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, she is thrust into a strange new world. Mary is poor and plain and desperate for change but the little girls in her care see and understand far more than their naive new teacher. And there is another problem: Mary does not like children, especially the precocious Alice Liddell.
Alice I Have Been
by Melanie Benjamin
Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.
A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.
Miyuki-chan in Wonderland
by CLAMP
There are many worlds in the universe outside of our own, connected by doors that are hidden to the eye. but if you chance upon those doors, you can be transported to a place where supple beauties reign supreme and all of your fantasies come allve. Should you pass through the doorways, be most careful, for the creatures you will meet can be as dangerous as they are beautiful. Many would die for a glimpse at those worlds--Miyuki would do anything to have them go away.
Still She Haunts Me
by Katie Roiphe
Charles Dodgson met Alice in 1856, when she was almost four years old. Eventually he would capture her in his photographs, and transform the stories he told her into the luminous Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Then, when Alice was eleven, the Liddell family shut him out, and his relationship with Alice ended abruptly. The pages from Dodgson’s diary that may have explained the rift have disappeared.
In imagining what might have happened, Katie Roiphe has created a deep, textured portrait of Alice and Dodgson.
The Last Mimzy
by Henry Kuttner
These seventeen classic stories create their own unique galaxy of vain, protective, and murderous robots; devilish angels; and warm and angry aliens. In “Mimsy Were the Borogoves," a boy finds a discarded box containing a treasure trove of curious objects. When he and his sister begin to play with these trinkets–including a crystal cube that magnifies the unimaginable and a strange doll with removable organs that don’t quite correspond to those of the human body–their parents grow concerned. And they should be. For the items are changing the way the children think and perceive the world around them–for better or worse.
The Taxi Navigator
by Richard Mosher
Kid Kyle is happiest when he's being the navigator in his uncle Hank's taxi. Cruising the streets of New York City, he escapes his parents' fighting and learns all sorts of things, like how to spot tourists and other big tippers. But Kyle's strict Wall Street parents don't approve of Uncle Hank's freewheeling ways. Imagine what they'd say if they found out the pair had befriended three quirky downtown witches (one of whom is Alice Liddell).
Alice: Madness Returns
In this video game adaptation, Alice Liddell is a girl suffering from trauma caused by the death of her family in a fire. She was discharged from a psychiatric clinic and now lives in an orphanage for mentally traumatized orphans under the care of Dr. Angus Bumby. To get rid of the trauma and learn the truth about her past, she once again falls into Wonderland, where a new evil force has corrupted it.