Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson began to extemporise a fantastic story about a girl called Alice to amuse Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell, young daughters of the Dean of Christchurch, during a boating trip in the summer of 1862. The two books which resulted fairly turned children’s literature upside down. No plot so wildly inventive, no nonsense so brilliant and inspired, no characters like the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Mock Turtle had ever existed before – and all of it without a hint of Moral Purpose!

Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece continues to entertain children and to tease and intrigue adults, and – defying all the difficulties posed by a narrative so full of puns, parody and wordplay – has been translated hundreds of times. Sir John Tenniel complained that Dodgson – ‘that conceited old Don’ – an impossible man to work with, but his illustrations proved such perfect realizations of the text that they have become inseparable. No edition of the Alice books can be called complete without them.