Children’s literature began in the mid-eighteenth century and first took hold in Britain. Many of the most celebrated children’s classics have a famous story of origin attached to them (Grenby 3). The Alice’s book was the product of a long and intricate series of collaborations, having begun as a tale made by Charles Dodgson while he was on a boat trip with Alice Liddell and her siblings in 1862 (Grenby 3). The tale was expanded and turned into a manuscript volume illustrated by  Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Dodgson, and presented to Alice. The manuscript was later borrowed back, and prepared for ‘official’ publication with commissioned illustrations drawn by John Tenniel (Hollingsworth 120).

Alice was not much liked by children when it first came out. In a survey of children’s reading habits conducted in 1888, Alice did not feature at all in the popularity polls, nor did adults take to it either. Yet by the time the sequel came out six years later, the original book had become universally known and loved (Carpenter 68).Carroll’s lifetime attest to the book’s immediate popularity abroad, as the two volumes had numerous North American editions and were translated into a host of foreign languages. By the end of the Victorian age they were international classics (Rackin 13). Translated thousands of times into scores of languages from Swahili to Swedish, from modern Czech to Mandarin Chinese, they are one of the most quoted works ever written in English (Rackin 20).

Until well into the twentieth century, the Alices were seen almost exclusively as children’s literature. Their popularity derived from the liberating imaginative experience they offered young readers, as opposed to unimaginative, ‘useful’ texts with educational and moral values (Rackin 20). Victorian children from affluent families in particular, were often lonely and confined by rules and conducts. In 1848, a Punch article testified to the story’s success indicating that children were best appealed to by entertainment in the period known as the “golden age of childhood” (Morris 170). Carroll feared the book would not appeal to all children initially, as it was full of games, toys, and other diversions that might be familiar to only children from upper classes (Morris 171). Nonetheless, Victorian children were delighted with the tales of adventure and fantasy, and the nursery rhymes, silly puns, and playful jokes written to amuse them.

The character Alice, in many ways an ordinary bourgeois child of her own era, is often celebrated today as a universal figure of a heroine (Bloom 14). She rejects and frees herself from stereotypical female traits, and is not trapped by the confines of society’s roles and requirements (Davis 30). Alice, “unlike other fairy-tale heroines, requires no fairy god-mother, huntsman, or good fairy–just her own wits and ingenuity” (Irwin 8).  The stories offer child readers from the past and today, a realistic heroine with whom they could identify with.

In Harvey Darton’s words, Alice marked the arrival of “liberty of thought in children’s books” (Carpetner 68). The stories differed from traditional fairy tales to offer new reflections in the Victorian’s fast-changing society (Vielmas 2). The plots are commonly seen as “the logic of insanity” (Bloom 31), diverging from “mainstream realism”, thereby giving a new perspective on everyday reality (Vielmas 1). Critics found the stories addressed issues beyond the comprehension and appreciation of a child, and question whether the story was more suitable and intended for adults. The logic of “non-sense” is prevalent, and critics came to believe that Carroll had constructed these accounts with much meaning, whether consciously or not. The plots are packed with ‘adult’ lessons about language, identity, maturity, and death (Brooker 93). Scholars also suggest the importance of the childhood notion. The character Alice offers its adult readers an opportunity to visit a fantasy space that signifies their own ideal childhoods, enabling them to escape the problems in their adult lives (Hollingsworth 24). The child character then acted as “mediators between the spaces of childhood and adulthood” (Hollingsworth 24), identifiable to both children and adults at the same time.