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Contents

Poems and songs

• "All in the golden afternoon..." —the prefatory verse, an original poem by Carroll that recalls the rowing expedition on which he first told the story of Alice's adventures underground
• "How Doth the Little Crocodile" — a parody of Isaac Watts' nursery rhyme, "Against Idleness And Mischief"
• "The Mouse's Tale" —an example of concrete poetry
• "You Are Old, Father William" — a parody of Robert Southey's "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them"
• The Duchess's lullaby, "Speak roughly to your little boy..." — a parody of David Bates' "Speak Gently"
• "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat" — a parody of "Twinkle twinkle little star"
• The Lobster Quadrille — a parody of Mary Botham Howitt's "The Spider and the Fly"
• "'Tis the Voice of the Lobster" — a parody of "The Sluggard"
• "Beautiful Soup" — a parody of James M. Sayles's "Star of the Evening, Beautiful Star"
• "The Queen of Hearts" — an actual nursery rhyme
• "They told me you had been to her..." — the White Rabbit's evidence

Tenniel's illustrations

John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice do not portray the real Alice Liddell, who had dark hair and a short fringe. There is a persistent legend that Carroll sent Tenniel a photograph of Mary Hilton Babcock, another child-friend, but no evidence for this has yet come to light, and whether Tenniel actually used Babcock as his model is open to dispute.

Famous lines and expressions

The term "Wonderland", from the title, has entered the language and refers to a marvellous imaginary place, or else a real-world place that one perceives to have dream-like qualities. It, like much of the Alice work, is widely referred to in popular culture.

"Down the Rabbit-Hole", the Chapter 1 title, has become a popular term for going on an adventure into the unknown. In drug culture, "going down the rabbit hole" is a metaphor for taking hallucinogenic drugs, as Carroll's novel appears similar in form to a drug trip.

In Chapter 6, the Cheshire Cat's disappearance prompts Alice to say one of her most memorable lines: "...a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"

In Chapter 7, the Hatter gives his famous riddle without an answer: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Although Carroll intended the riddle to have no solution, in a new preface to the 1896 edition of Alice, he proposes several answers: "Because it can produce a few notes, though… they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!" (Note the spelling of "never" as "nevar"—turning it into "raven" when inverted. This spelling, however, was "corrected" in later editions to "never" and Carroll's pun was lost.) Puzzle expert Sam Loyd offered the following solutions:

• Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes
• Poe wrote on both
• They both have inky quills ("inkwells")
• Bills and tales ("tails") are among their characteristics
• Because they both stand on their legs, conceal their steels ("steals"), and ought to be made to shut up

Many other answers are listed in The Annotated Alice. In Frank Beddor's novel Seeing Redd, the main antagonist, Queen Redd (a megalomaniac parody of the Queen of Hearts) meets Lewis Carroll and declares that the answer to the riddle is "Because I say so". Carroll is too terrified to contradict her.

Arguably the most famous quote is used when the Queen of Hearts screams "Off with her head!" at Alice (and everyone else she feels slightly annoyed with). Possibly Carroll here was echoing a scene in Shakespeare's Richard III (III, iv, 76) where Richard demands the execution of Lord Hastings, crying "Off with his head!"

When Alice is growing taller after eating the cake labelled "Eat me" she says, "curiouser and curiouser", a famous line that is still used today to describe an event with extraordinary wonder. The Cheshire Cat confirms to Alice "We're all mad here", a line that has been repeated for years as a result.