Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
Alice is a fictional character in the books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass which were written by Charles Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Carroll.
The character is based on Alice Liddell, a child friend of Dodgson's. The pictures however do not depict Alice Liddell, as the illustrator never saw her. She is seen as a logical girl, sometimes being pedantic, especially with Humpty Dumpty in the second book.
In honor of Alice, wide hairbows are sometimes called "Alice bands", particularly in the UK.
There is a vast Alice-collecting cottage industry, which has recently increased due to the Internet. There's usually an average of 3000 items up for auction, from rare books to more recent commisioned Art. On the Internet itself there are around 100 Alice sites which range from the basic pictures-and-text ones (i.e. the On Line readers), to the more academic which are nearer to discussion groups which analyse every last word of Lewis Carroll.
While there have always been Alice In Wonderland/Alice Through The Looking Glass books a more recent development is Alice books of a factual nature such as The Alice Companion, The Annotated Alice or Alice In Her Oxford Wonderland.
Worth mentioning at this stage is a rash of Alice related material in the music industry during the 1980s. It was around 1982 when it began and was mainly centered around Goths and Indie music. Siouxsie & the Banshees for instance named their label Wonderland and cut an album called Through The Looking Glass, otherwise there was no direct connection. The former Batcave Club in London changed its name to Alice In Wonderland . the founders who were two members of Doctor & the Medics who had released an EP of the same name. The Sisters Of Mercy, who were male and a spin off from the Mission, had a hit single called Alice which was not about Alice Cooper but about the entire image of the Lewis Carroll heroine. Possibly the most unusual Alice connection from this time came from singer songwriter Virginia Astley, whose middle name is Alice. Her instrumental album, From Gardens Where We Feel Secure is the perfect soundtrack to the stories and is full of SFX recorded not a long way from Godstow. She would go on to create some very obvious Alice songs such as Over The Edge Of The World and Nothing Is What It Seems. Her family were from the Daresbury area as well
One can get just about every kind of merchandise imaginable, from Alice clocks to Alice pillow cases. It's not that easy to obtain, but you can look for Alice shops, for example, the White Rabbit in California. England has at least two: the Rabbit Hole in Llandudno and Alice's Shop in Oxford. Smaller ones can be found in Halton Cheshire and in Bournemouth where there's an Alice Theme Park.
Like the Bible and the works of Shakespeare Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into many languages, even Esperanto.
The many Lewis Carroll web sites give full details and begin to spread Alice out in three ways: Alice In Wonderland, Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll, so if Alice surfing is your thing then it's never-ending.
Lewis Carroll has worldwide societies including the North American, Japanese and New Zealand ones, as well as the United Kingdom. You get the impression that America has laid claim to Alice as they have a lot of merchandise not available anywhere else. One of these is an ingenious book called Sherlock Holmes and the Alice In Wonderland Murders and which not even the biggest crime books shop in London had. The Lewis Carroll Society costs very little to join considering what you get and they also publish a number of booklets not available in the shops. They also have a Daresbury branch. On Yahoo! there is the Lewis Carroll Community which has over 300 members and is more of a discussion site where a few people of a more academic bent can get into some very intellectual discussions.
