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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

1865

  • alice (fictitious character : carroll), fiction
  • british and irish fiction (fictional works by one author)
  • fiction, fantasy, general
  • juvenile fiction
  • classics
  • fantasy & magic
  • imagination & play
  • adventure and adventurers
  • adventure and adventurers, fiction
  • adventure stories

The story

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. A young girl named Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. One of the best-known works of Victorian literature, its narrative, structure, characters and imagery have had huge influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.

What it’s like

Brisk, bright and faintly absurd, with the sense of a summer afternoon that has gone slightly wrong: drowsy riverbank heat, a sudden plunge into dim tunnels, then a world of oversized doors, tiny bottles and garden croquet played with flamingos. Carroll's prose is light, dry and conversational, full of crisp little exchanges, deadpan logic and comic set pieces that read almost like stage business, so the pages move quickly and the humour lands in short, bright bursts rather than building slowly. The emotional register stays playful and mildly unsettled, a child's curiosity repeatedly tested by rules that refuse to make sense, and Alice herself grows from bewildered politeness into brisk, sharp-tongued confidence. It is gentle throughout, with no real violence or gore and only brief moments of peril that are more silly than frightening. It suits a lazy afternoon, a comfort reread, or a bedtime read-aloud, and it is well suited to readers who enjoy whimsy, wordplay and nonsense, or who want something light and old-fashioned with a dash of surreal charm.

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