108 Fun Facts About Alice in Wonderland

Why was the first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland withdrawn in 1865?

Its illustrator disliked the printing of his pictures, so the first run of 2,000 copies was withdrawn and the book reprinted; the approved edition reached shops late in 1865, dated 1866.

What was Lewis Carroll's real name?

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson made 'Lewis Carroll' by Latinising his first two names to Carolus Ludovicus, anglicising them and swapping the order.

On what date did the famous 'golden afternoon' boat trip take place, when the story was first told?

On 4 July 1862 Carroll rowed the three Liddell sisters from Folly Bridge up the Thames to Godstow for a picnic, improvising the tale on the way.

How old was Alice Liddell on the boat trip where she first heard the story?

Alice Liddell, born 4 May 1852, was 10; her sisters Lorina and Edith were 13 and 8, and Alice asked Carroll to write the story down.

What title did Carroll give the handwritten story he presented to Alice Liddell in 1864?

Alice's Adventures Under Ground carried 37 of Carroll's own drawings; for publication he made it about twice as long, adding episodes such as the Mad Tea-Party.

What does Alice cry out as she starts stretching 'like the largest telescope that ever was'?

'Curiouser and curiouser!' Alice is so surprised that, Carroll says, she 'quite forgot how to speak good English', and her slip became a stock phrase for things growing ever stranger.

In the book, what does the White Rabbit pull from his waistcoat when Alice first sees him?

A pocket watch: Alice barely notices that the Rabbit can talk, but a rabbit with a waistcoat pocket and a watch to take out of it sends her running after him.

What is written on the bottle Alice finds after falling down the rabbit hole?

The 'Drink me' bottle shrinks Alice to ten inches high, while a cake labelled 'Eat me' does the opposite, growing her to a tremendous size.

What is the Caterpillar doing when Alice meets him?

Smoking a hookah on a mushroom, the Caterpillar takes no notice of Alice at first; as he crawls away he tells her one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other shorter.

Whose baby turns into a piglet in Alice's arms?

The Duchess's baby is flung at Alice and turns into a pig; she lets it trot off into the wood, reasoning it would have made a dreadfully ugly child but a rather handsome pig.

What does the Cheshire Cat leave behind when it disappears?

Its grin, which 'remained some time after the rest of it had gone'. Carroll didn't invent the grinning cat: 'to grin like a Cheshire cat' was a saying before he was born.

Who is the third guest at the Mad Tea-Party, alongside the Hatter and the March Hare?

The Dormouse sits between them fast asleep while they rest their elbows on it like a cushion, and when Alice leaves they are trying to stuff it into the teapot.

What is the Hatter's unanswerable riddle?

'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' was meant to have no answer, though Carroll's 1896 preface offered one: it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat.

In the original drawings, what does the '10/6' on the Hatter's hat show?

Its price, ten shillings and sixpence: Carroll later explained that the Hatter carried hats about to sell, even the one on his own head.

What is the popular explanation for the old phrase 'mad as a hatter'?

Mercury poisoning among hat makers is the usual story, since mercury used on felt could leave hatters trembling and confused, though the origin is unproven. The phrase was in print by 1829, decades before the book.

What are the 'balls' in the Queen's croquet game?

Live hedgehogs are the balls, flamingos serve as mallets and the card soldiers bend over to make the hoops, so the hedgehogs keep crawling away.

What crime is the Knave of Hearts accused of at the trial?

The Knave is tried for stealing the Queen's tarts, following the old nursery rhyme; Alice's outburst that they are 'nothing but a pack of cards' ends the dream.

Why are the gardeners painting the roses red?

They planted a white rose tree by mistake where the Queen wanted a red one, and the three gardeners, who are playing cards, tell Alice they will lose their heads if she finds out.

What do the Gryphon and Mock Turtle dance for Alice?

The Lobster Quadrille: each dancer takes a lobster as a partner, advances twice, then throws it as far out to sea as possible and swims after it.

The Mock Turtle's sobbing song swaps the 'Beautiful Star' of a popular ballad for a beautiful what?

Soup: 'Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, waiting in a hot tureen!' parodies the ballad 'Star of the Evening, Beautiful Star', a fitting hymn from a creature named after mock turtle soup.

Which character in the Caucus-Race is a caricature of Carroll himself?

The Dodo is Carroll, who called himself one; a popular but unproven story says his stammer turned his real surname into 'Do-do-'. The Lory and the Eaglet stand for Alice's sisters Lorina and Edith.

Which three sisters, one named with an anagram of 'Alice', live in a treacle well in a Mad Tea-Party story?

Elsie, Lacie and Tillie are the Liddell sisters in disguise: Elsie is L.C., for Lorina Charlotte; Lacie is Alice rearranged; and Tillie is short for Matilda, Edith's family nickname.

Alice's 'How doth the little crocodile' garbles a famous moral poem about which hard-working creature?

A bee: Isaac Watts's 'How doth the little busy bee' taught children to work hard, and Carroll swapped in a crocodile that simply grins while little fishes swim into its jaws.

Who is declared the winner of the Caucus-Race that the creatures run to get dry?

Everybody: 'Everybody has won, and all must have prizes,' so Alice hands round the sweets from her pocket and is solemnly presented with her own thimble.

How much did Carroll's own copy of the 1865 first edition sell for at auction in 1998?

Carroll's own copy of the withdrawn 1865 printing sold at Christie's New York for $1.54 million in December 1998, a record then for a children's book; about 22 copies of that printing survive.

In what year was the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, published?

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There was published by Macmillan in December 1871, though its title page is dated 1872.

What game provides the structure of Through the Looking-Glass?

The book is structured as a chess game: Alice starts as a white pawn, and the Red Queen tells her she can become a queen by reaching the eighth square.

How can Alice read the poem 'Jabberwocky' when she first finds it?

By holding it up to a mirror: the poem is printed backwards, and Alice works out that 'it's a Looking-glass book, of course', so in a glass 'the words will all go the right way again'.

Which character explains the nonsense words of 'Jabberwocky' to Alice?

Humpty Dumpty glosses the first verse for Alice, calling words like 'slithy' portmanteaus with 'two meanings packed up into one word', a term that stuck.

What kind of sword slays the Jabberwock in the poem 'Jabberwocky'?

Vorpal: the hero's blade goes 'snicker-snack' through the Jabberwock, and Dungeons & Dragons later borrowed the word for magic swords that lop off heads.

Which pair of characters make Alice listen to the poem 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'?

Tweedledum and Tweedledee: Alice only wants the way out of the wood, but Tweedledum picks the longest poem they know and Tweedledee recites the lot.

What is unusual about the White Queen's memory in Through the Looking-Glass?

She remembers things before they happen: 'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen explains, and she screams before she pricks her finger on her brooch.

Why did Carroll cut the 'Wasp in a Wig' episode from Through the Looking-Glass?

His illustrator urged him to: he wrote that the wasp chapter 'doesn't interest me in the least' and that he couldn't see his way to a picture, and the text stayed lost until proofs surfaced at auction in 1974.

The White Queen tells Alice she has sometimes believed six impossible things before which meal?

Breakfast: when Alice protests that one can't believe impossible things, the Queen says she simply lacks practice, having drilled for half an hour a day at Alice's age.

What was Lewis Carroll's day job at Oxford University?

Mathematics lecturer: Carroll taught the subject at his Oxford college for 26 years, and scholar Melanie Bayley argues that Wonderland's absurdities mock the abstract new maths of his day.

Alice Liddell's father Henry held what position at Oxford?

Dean of Christ Church for more than thirty years: Henry Liddell also co-wrote the standard Greek-English lexicon, and running the college where Carroll taught is how his children came to know the author.

Where was Lewis Carroll born in 1832?

Daresbury, Cheshire, where his father was the curate: for his centenary, admirers worldwide paid for a church window there in which Carroll and Alice attend the Nativity above Wonderland's creatures.

In 1880 Alice Liddell, the real Alice, married cricketer Reginald Hargreaves in which famous church?

Westminster Abbey: Alice was born in its shadow, while her father was headmaster of Westminster School, right next door to the Abbey.

Kathryn Beaumont voiced Disney's Alice in 1951 and which heroine two years later?

Wendy in Peter Pan: for both films Beaumont also acted the scenes out on camera so the animators could copy her movements.

Ed Wynn, Disney's Mad Hatter in 1951, later played Uncle Albert, who laughs himself up to the ceiling, in which film?

Mary Poppins: thirteen years after the Hatter, the old vaudeville clown played a man who floats whenever he laughs and sinks back to the floor the moment he turns sad.

What celebration is under way at the tea party in Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland?

An unbirthday: everyone has 364 a year, as the song points out. Carroll coined the word in the sequel, where a cravat is proudly shown off as an 'un-birthday present'.

How did Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland do at the box office on first release?

It was considered a failure: even a Christmas Day television special couldn't sell it, and it took the psychedelic generation to rediscover the film and bring it back to cinemas in 1974.

Which silent-film star was set to play Alice in a part-animated Disney film planned in 1933?

Mary Pickford would have been a live-action Alice in a cartoon Wonderland, but Disney shelved the idea once Paramount made its own Alice, and his version waited until 1951.

Who directed the 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland?

Tim Burton: rather than retell the book, he made a sequel of sorts, in which a 19-year-old Alice returns to the dream world of her childhood with no memory of it.

Who played Alice in Disney's 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland?

Mia Wasikowska plays Alice Kingsleigh, who bolts from a garden party where she is being proposed to and lands in a world its inhabitants call Underland.

Which actress played the Red Queen in Disney's 2010 Alice in Wonderland?

Helena Bonham Carter: her Red Queen takes her name from Carroll's sequel but her temper from the first book's Queen of Hearts, who shouts 'Off with his head!'

Which veteran British actor voiced the Jabberwocky in Disney's 2010 Alice in Wonderland?

Christopher Lee: the film calls its dragon the Jabberwocky, though in Carroll's poem the beast is the Jabberwock and 'Jabberwocky' is only the poem's title.

Roughly how much did Disney's 2010 Alice in Wonderland gross worldwide?

About $1 billion: critics were split, with barely half of reviews favourable, yet its $1.025 billion was beaten among 2010 releases only by Toy Story 3.

Which two Academy Awards did Disney's 2010 Alice in Wonderland win?

Art Direction and Costume Design: for all its digital spectacle, the film lost the one other Oscar it was up for, Visual Effects, to Inception.

Which band recorded the 1967 hit 'White Rabbit', inspired by the Alice books?

Jefferson Airplane: Grace Slick, who wrote it in her earlier band the Great Society, said it was aimed at parents who read children stories like Alice and then wondered why they tried drugs.

Where in New York is the 1959 bronze Alice sculpture patterned on Tenniel's drawings?

Central Park: publisher George Delacorte gave it to the city's children in memory of his wife Margarita, and the sculptor modelled the Mad Hatter on Delacorte himself.

Which 2010 film character is an amalgam of Carroll's Red Queen and Queen of Hearts?

Iracebeth of Crims, the Red Queen, merges Carroll's two queens; her sister Mirana, the White Queen, is played by Anne Hathaway.

In the 2016 film Alice Through the Looking Glass, Sacha Baron Cohen plays the living embodiment of what?

Time: the book's Mad Tea-Party already makes Time a person, a 'him' who, the Hatter says, has kept the clocks at six o'clock ever since the two of them quarrelled.

The Red Queen tells Alice that in her country it takes all the running you can do to do what?

Stay in the same place: to get anywhere else, the Queen adds, 'you must run at least twice as fast as that', and biologists borrowed the scene for the Red Queen hypothesis of evolution.

What title did Carroll give the shortened, coloured Alice he made for very young children?

The Nursery 'Alice' was meant, Carroll wrote, less to be read than 'to be thumbed, to be cooed over, to be dogs'-eared, to be rumpled, to be kissed' by children 'from Nought to Five'.

Alice's dress became fixed as blue in the popular mind after Harry Theaker coloured Tenniel's plates in which year?

Harry Theaker coloured sixteen of Tenniel's plates for Macmillan's 1911 edition, giving Alice the blue dress that Disney and most later illustrators kept.

Alice in Wonderland syndrome, which makes things seem to shrink or grow, is often linked to which common condition?

Migraine: psychiatrist John Todd, who described the syndrome in 1955, suspected that Carroll, whose diaries record migraines with odd visual effects, drew on his own attacks for Alice's changes of size.

Why did American donors give Britain Carroll's Alice manuscript in 1948?

Its wartime stand: Alice Liddell had sold the manuscript in 1928 and it went to America, until donors there bought it back as a tribute to Britain's courage in facing Hitler.

Which country had a province ban Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1931 because its animals talk like people?

China's Hunan province pulled the book after its censor, General Ho Chien, ruled that giving animals human speech insulted people and would teach children that the two were equals.

Which live birds serve as the mallets in the Queen of Hearts' croquet game in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

Flamingos make hopeless mallets: Alice's bird keeps twisting its neck round to stare up into her face, while the soldiers bent double as hoops keep wandering off.

Which Beatle wrote a 1967 song inspired by the Lewis Carroll poem The Walrus and the Carpenter?

John Lennon wrote I Am the Walrus, then realised too late that the walrus is the villain of the poem and joked that he should have picked the carpenter instead.

A legend Lewis Carroll denied says which famous reader adored Alice and was sent his next book, a dry textbook?

Queen Victoria asked for his next work and got a dense scholarly treatise, the tale goes; Carroll flatly denied that anything of the kind had ever happened.

Which science-fiction film has its hero follow a woman with a white rabbit tattoo, in a nod to Lewis Carroll?

The Matrix keeps returning to Carroll: its hero is later offered a red pill as his way further down the rabbit hole, one of several Wonderland references in the film.

Which Spanish Surrealist painter illustrated a 1969 New York edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

Salvador Dalí made his version for Maecenas Press, joining a line of Alice illustrators that also includes Tove Jansson, Mervyn Peake and Ralph Steadman.

Which actor played the Mad Hatter, under a shock of orange hair, in the 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland?

Johnny Depp played him as a living mood ring: the Hatter's clothes, skin, hair and even accent shift during the film to match his emotions.

The Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland is named after a Victorian soup made mainly from which animal?

A calf gave its head and feet to mock turtle soup, a cheap imitation of the real thing, which is why the book's first illustrations show the creature with a calf's head.

Which word for a gleeful, snorting laugh did Lewis Carroll coin in his nonsense poem Jabberwocky?

Chortle, probably a blend of chuckle and snort, stuck: the Oxford English Dictionary now lists it along with galumphing, another word Carroll made up for the same poem.

Who is declared the winner of the circular Caucus-race that Alice joins in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

Everyone wins and everyone gets a prize: Carroll was poking fun at political caucuses, where a great deal of running in circles gets nobody anywhere.

What is the name of Alice's pet cat, whose mouse-catching she tactlessly praises to Wonderland's animals?

Dinah never sets a paw in Wonderland, yet her name alone scatters the creatures there; she returns in Through the Looking-Glass washing the faces of her two kittens.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the royal guards and gardeners are living versions of which objects?

Playing cards make up the whole court: the soldiers carry clubs, the courtiers are covered in diamonds and the king and queen's ten children are decorated with hearts.

After growing enormous in Wonderland's hall of doors, Alice shrinks and finds herself swimming in a pool of what?

Her own tears nearly drown her: she had wept gallons while nine feet tall, then shrank small enough to fall into the puddle she had cried.

What does Alice find lying on a three-legged glass table soon after she lands at the bottom of the rabbit hole?

A golden key fits a door only about fifteen inches high, and through it Alice glimpses the loveliest garden she has ever seen but is far too big to reach.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the cook's soup is ruined by far too much of which seasoning?

Pepper hangs so thick in the kitchen air that Alice and a howling baby cannot stop sneezing, and it gives the chapter half its title, Pig and Pepper.

In Lewis Carroll's poem The Walrus and the Carpenter, which creatures are coaxed along the beach and eaten?

Oysters, and only the young ones: the eldest shakes his heavy head and stays in his bed, while the eager little ones hurry off along the sand to become supper.

How does Alice's Adventures in Wonderland explain the adventure once Alice is back on the riverbank?

A dream accounts for it all: Alice wakes with her sister brushing away leaves that had drifted onto her face, just as the whole court came flying at her.

Which actress played the gentle White Queen, sister of the tyrant, in the 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland?

Anne Hathaway described her White Queen as a punk-rock vegan pacifist, and hers was one of the few characters in the film left without digital alteration.

Which Harry Potter star voiced Absolem, the blue Caterpillar, in the 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland?

Alan Rickman was meant to have his real face pasted onto the animated Caterpillar; the plan was dropped, though the animators kept a few of his features.

Which art did Lewis Carroll take up in 1856, eventually making about 3,000 images and building a rooftop studio?

Photography opened doors for Carroll into higher social circles, and he had become an amateur master of the medium by the time he abruptly gave it up in 1880.

Which term for a blended word, taken from a kind of suitcase, did Lewis Carroll introduce to English?

Portmanteau named a case that opens into two halves, so Carroll borrowed it for words such as slithy, which packs lithe and slimy into a single word.

In Through the Looking-Glass, which treat does the White Queen promise Alice every day except today?

Jam tomorrow outgrew the book to become a stock phrase for a promise that will never be kept, borrowed by the economist John Maynard Keynes among others.

In Lewis Carroll's centenary year, Alice Liddell met the man who had inspired which storybook character?

Peter Pan's real-life model, Peter Llewelyn Davies, was then in his thirties; their encounter became the 2013 play Peter and Alice, starring Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw.

Lewis Carroll first told Alice's story while rowing on which river, called the Isis as it passes Oxford?

The Thames carried the rowing party upstream from Folly Bridge in Oxford to the village of Godstow, with the tale made up along the way.

Which star played the Cheshire Cat beside Gene Wilder's Mock Turtle in a 1999 TV film of Alice in Wonderland?

Whoopi Goldberg shared the bill with Ben Kingsley, Martin Short and Robbie Coltrane, and the lavish production went on to win four Emmy Awards.

Which pop star's 2014 song Wonderland uses falling down the rabbit hole as a metaphor for a reckless love affair?

Taylor Swift tucked it away as a bonus track on a deluxe edition, and her first draft leaned on Carroll even harder, with the lover proclaiming the pair king and queen.

Which institution now holds the handwritten, self-illustrated manuscript that Lewis Carroll gave Alice Liddell?

The British Library holds it as a thank-you gift: after an auction carried the manuscript across the Atlantic, it was sent back in gratitude for Britain's wartime role.

The original illustrator of the Alice books spent over 50 years as a cartoonist at which satirical magazine?

Punch had made him famous long before Alice: he joined the magazine in 1850, rose to be its chief cartoonist in 1864 and stayed for half a century.

In an 1876 nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, which creature does a Bellman's oddly assorted crew sail away to hunt?

A Snark is the quarry, but the hunt ends badly: the one crew member who finds it quietly vanishes, because his catch was really the far more dangerous Boojum.

The closing poem of Through the Looking-Glass spells out Alice Pleasance Liddell using which poetic device?

An acrostic hides her in plain sight: the first letters of the poem's 21 lines spell her full name, in verses that look back on a summer boat trip.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Mouse's sad life story is printed down the page in what shape?

A long tail, because Alice mistakes his tale for his tail and pictures the words twisting down the page, a layout later seen as an ancestor of concrete poetry.

The Red Queen's line to Alice about running just to stay in place names a hypothesis in which science?

Evolutionary biology took it up in 1973, when Leigh Van Valen argued that species must keep adapting simply to survive beside rivals that are adapting too.

In Through the Looking-Glass, which two beasts does Alice find fighting over the White King's crown?

The Lion and the Unicorn step straight off the national coat of arms, and the joke is that both already serve the very king whose crown they are brawling over.

Which future Hollywood leading man played the Mock Turtle in Paramount's star-packed 1933 Alice in Wonderland?

Cary Grant was one of a parade of Paramount stars in the film, with Gary Cooper as the White Knight and Charlotte Henry in her first leading role as Alice.

Which Monty Python member made his solo directing debut with Jabberwocky, a 1977 film named after Carroll's poem?

Terry Gilliam cast fellow Python Michael Palin as a cooper's apprentice forced to hunt the dragon, two years after co-directing Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Which designer's name fronts the dark 2000 PC game in which a traumatised Alice returns to a ruined Wonderland?

American McGee had built levels for Doom and Quake before this debut as lead designer, which opens with Alice in an asylum after a house fire kills her family.

Which fairy-tale drama launched a 2013 Wonderland spin-off on ABC starring Sophie Lowe as Alice?

Once Upon a Time later took on the spin-off's Knave of Hearts as a regular, after the Wonderland series was cancelled following a single season.

Which Canadian singer wrote and recorded Alice, the lead single from the 2010 Alice in Wonderland soundtrack?

Avril Lavigne pitched it herself: she was at Disney's offices to discuss an Alice-themed clothing line when she asked to write a song for the film.

Which puzzle did Lewis Carroll invent at Christmas 1877 and later publish in Vanity Fair as Doublets?

Word ladder puzzles turn one word into another a single letter at a time; Carroll devised the game for two girls, Julia and Ethel Arnold, and first called it Word-links.

Which Welsh seaside resort was home to Penmorfa, the house where Alice Liddell's family spent their holidays?

Llandudno's quiet West Shore held Penmorfa, which later became the Gogarth Abbey Hotel; the Liddells went there regularly while Alice was growing up.

When Alice's neck stretches above the treetops in Wonderland, a nesting Pigeon accuses her of being what?

A serpent, the Pigeon insists, and Alice makes matters worse by admitting she has eaten eggs, which proves to the bird that little girls are just a kind of snake.

In Alice in Wonderland, the White Rabbit mistakes Alice for his housemaid and calls her by which name?

Mary Ann is ordered to run home and fetch his gloves and a fan, and Alice is so startled that she obeys without ever explaining the mistake.

Which London publisher, fresh from issuing The Water-Babies, first brought out Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

Macmillan suggested modelling the book's design on The Water-Babies, and the firm went on to hold the exclusive rights to Alice in Britain for some four decades.

Which Scottish fantasy author's children so loved the Alice manuscript that Lewis Carroll chose to publish it?

George MacDonald, author of The Princess and the Goblin, was Carroll's friend and mentor; his family read the unfinished manuscript and urged him to print it.

Which US university's 1932 Lewis Carroll centenary display did Alice Liddell, aged 80, cross the Atlantic to see?

Columbia put on show the very manuscript she had sold four years earlier, by then the property of the collector Eldridge R. Johnson.

In the Garden of Live Flowers in Through the Looking-Glass, which flower is the first to speak to Alice?

A Tiger-lily tells her that flowers can talk whenever there is anybody worth talking to, and that most stay silent only because soft garden beds keep them asleep.

In which Surrey town, home to his sisters' house The Chestnuts, did Lewis Carroll die and get buried?

Guildford holds his grave in the Mount Cemetery; he died there of pneumonia in January 1898, less than two weeks before his 66th birthday.

Which UK dance company premiered Christopher Wheeldon's three-act Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 2011?

The Royal Ballet had not commissioned a full-length story ballet since 1995, and Joby Talbot's music was the company's first full-length score in 20 years.

Which English illustrator of Grimm's fairy tales drew a 1907 Alice once the original copyright expired?

Arthur Rackham's 13 colour plates led a rush: once the publisher's exclusive rights lapsed, around 20 newly illustrated editions appeared within two years.

Which two-volume fairy novel did Lewis Carroll publish late in life, to far weaker sales than the Alice books?

Sylvie and Bruno follows two fairy siblings, but readers of the day disliked its intricate plot and baby talk, and it sold only about 13,000 copies.