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Interpretive essays

Although Carroll invented Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the entertainment of children, many scholars have thought to discover various underlying influences in his work. The books have been explained from all kinds of viewpoints, like drug use, Freudian influences, mathematics, political satire, sex and pedophilia, nonsense, etc.

On this page you can find a collection of articles that deal about those underlying meanings that Carroll is supposed to have added (consciously or not) in the Alice books.

Please mind that these texts were not written by me personally. References to the author and publication details can be found on the page itself. The articles are reproduced on this site with permission from the authors.

“If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, “I’ll give him sixpence. I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.”

General discussion of the ‘Alice’ books

Discussion of Lewis Carroll, the author, in relation to Alice

What/who influenced Carroll while writing the story

Illustrations

Poetry

Drugs and hallucinations

Politics

Philosophic reasoning

Mathematics

Other subjects

External sources