However, there is no evidence that Lewis Carroll was under the influence of any opium or other drugs while writing the book, and it’s probable that readers themselves, especially in the 1960s, assigned their own meanings to the text.ġ7. The book and various films have all been interpreted as making reference to drug abuse, with Alice drinking potions, eating mushrooms and hallucinating as if she were on LSD, all while the world around her changes frighteningly and her mood and perceptions are hugely altered.ġ5. Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 psychedelic song White Rabbit also goes along with the drug theme, with lyrics including ‘One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small / And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all’ and ‘When the men on the chessboard get up / And tell you where to go / And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom / And your mind is moving low / Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know.’ġ6. Before getting its famous title, the novel was originally called Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.ġ4. After reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Queen Victoria asked Carroll to dedicate his next book to her – which he did with An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations.ġ3. The tree that supposedly inspired the Cheshire Cat’s tree is in the garden behind the real-life Alice’s home at Christ Church College, Oxford.ġ2. The most popular theories include: ‘Because Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both’, ‘Because there’s a B in both and an N in neither’ and ‘Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes’.ġ1. That hasn’t stopped several people trying to guess the answer. It was written by Carroll, who insisted there was no answer.ġ0. The book’s riddle, ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ is total nonsense. Look closely at the DoDo bird’s flame when he lights his pipe at the White Rabbit’s house in the 1951 adaptation and you should see a Mickey Mouse flickering away.Ĩ. The several TV and film adaptations of the book have a total of two Oscar wins, four primetime Emmys and several Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations to show for their various successes.ĩ. The Alice novels were banned in China in 1931, because they believed that ‘animals should not use human language’.ħ. The original 1864 handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland contained illustrations by Lewis Carroll himself – and they weren’t half bad.ĥ. Lewis Carroll’s real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.Ħ. Lewis Carroll himself suffered from these diseases, but it took until 1955 for English psychiatrist John Todd to discover the disease and give it its memorable name.Ĥ. There are even diseases named after the book: Alice In Wonderland syndrome (AWS), where sufferers perceive parts of their body to be changing size, and Alice In Wonderland-like syndrome (AWLS), where people misperceive the size and distance of objects around them.ģ.
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