Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll's 1865 story sends Alice down a rabbit hole after a White Rabbit with a pocket watch, into a world where a bottle labelled 'Drink Me' and a cake marked 'Eat Me' make her shrink and grow, the Cheshire Cat fades away leaving only its grin, the Mad Hatter keeps an endless tea party with the March Hare and a sleepy Dormouse, and the Queen of Hearts plays croquet with flamingos and calls for everyone's head, until the trial of the Knave of Hearts, accused of stealing the tarts.

Carroll, an Oxford mathematics lecturer whose real name was Charles Dodgson, first told the story on a boat trip in 1862 to three young sisters, among them Alice Liddell; John Tenniel's illustrations became part of it. It is one of the most famous children's books in the world, and its games with logic and language delight adults too. The sequel is Through the Looking-Glass.

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), a shy mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, who was also a deacon, a pioneering photographer and the author of books on logic. On a boat trip in July 1862 he made up a story for the three daughters of the college dean, and ten-year-old Alice Liddell asked him to write it down.

The result, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, followed by Through the Looking-Glass and The Hunting of the Snark, changed children's books forever with nonsense, wordplay and logic games that delight adults as much as children.