The delights of nonsense

On July 4, 1862, a math that is little-known at Oxford, Charles Dodgson, went on a boat trip with his friend, Reverend Robinson Duckworth, Alice Liddell along with her two sisters. The day that is next beneath the pen name Lewis Carroll, he began writing the story he made up for the girls — what he first called the “fairy-tale of ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.’”

As Alice fell down, down, down the rabbit hole, so too have Carroll lovers after her, wanting to explain so how Wonderland made such huge waves in children’s literature. So how exactly does some sort of with a disappearing cat, hysterical turtle, and smoking caterpillar capture and hold readers’ imaginations, old and young from on occasion? It might seem obvious, but at the time, Carroll’s creation broke the guidelines in unprecedented new ways.

They departed from prior children’s books, which served as strict moral compasses in western society that is puritanical eventually adding more engaging characters and illustrations due to the fact years passed.

But because of the time Carroll started recording his tale, children had a genre to call their particular, and literary nonsense was just taking off. The scene was set for Alice.

Written during the first Golden Age of Children’s Literature, Carroll’s classic is an absurd yet magnificently perceptive form of entertainment unlike something that came before if not after it. Read more