Delighting in Alice's Adventures

I've had this collector's edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for many, many years.  I'm quite sure I've never once read it or any edition of the book.  Crazy, huh?

Hearing about the recently released movie starring Johnny Depp, which is based on this classic adventure story written by Lewis Carroll, prompted me to pull my copy down from the shelf.  

     

A couple of nights ago, I began to read of Alice and her nonsensical adventure.  I'm totally thrilled with the story.  Right now, it's exactly the silly change I need from the books I normally read.


I'm impressed that the author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who used the pen-name Lewis Carroll, was an English mathematician.  Other books to his credit included A Syllabus of Plane Algebraic Geometry and The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry.  I'm amazed that Dodgson could go to such opposite extremes in his writing genres.    

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland began as a story told by the author to three little girls he had taken for a ride on the river Cherwell in 1862.  In 1865 he expanded the story into the book we all know.





I'm in love with the nonsense that fills page after page and I want it to last forever.  I'm taking my time and cherishing all the narrative, conversations and accompanying illustrations in the book. 

In the Publisher's Preface, The Easton Press writes, "But virtually all commentators have concluded that however absurd Alice's Adventures in Wonderland appears on the surface, what keeps the comedy alive for us today is the devastating sense lurking behind the nonsense."

If you need a break from your daily troubles, I highly recommend this book.  It would be such fun to write a story that goes along with little concern for the logical and countless unexpected surprises.  It must have been a delight for a mathematician to frolic in such silliness for a while.