“Alice in Wonderland” (original English title “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”) is a children’s book by the British author Lewis Carroll, first published in 1865.
“Alice in Wonderland” is considered one of the outstanding works from the genre of literary nonsense. Together with the sequel “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There”, published in 1871, this children’s book is one of the classics of world literature. For example, the narrative is now part of the “ZEIT” library of 100 books. The British newspaper “The Guardian” in 2009 included both “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” in the list of 1000 novels that everyone must have read. The narrative style and structure, the characters and the metaphor still have great cultural influence. “Alice in Wonderland” was adapted for the stage and in the film. Characters in the narrative, such as the Cheshire Cat, the Jabberwocky, the March Bunny and the Mad Hatter, or individual episodes, such as that of the tea party that Alice gets into, have been repeatedly taken up and cited in pop culture.
The fictional world in which Alice is located in Wonderland plays with logic in such a way that the narrative enjoys great popularity among mathematicians and children alike. It contains numerous satirical allusions – not only to Carroll’s personal friends, but also to the school lessons children in England at that time had to learn by heart. Most of the time, the story and its sequel “Through the Looking-Glass” are viewed as a single entity. The stories are also known from the illustrations by British illustrator John Tenniel in their first editions.
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