Alice, a 158-year-old girl

Few would dare to deny being fascinated by Alice, the little girl who was drawn into a world full of characters and things so unreal that only the overflowing mind of its author, Lewis Carroll, could have created it.

Or by Alice, now a young woman, who was not afraid to face the evil Red Queen.

The story is so evocative that, even 128 years after its first edition, it continues to win fans and has been the subject of numerous versions, among which we cannot fail to mention the films: the Walt Disney cartoon, filmed in 1951, but which retains all its freshness; or the one directed by the brilliant Tim Burton and also produced by the Disney film company, released in 2010.

But what about the original? Its full title is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it turns out that it is not such a childish story, as it is full of satirical allusions to 19th century English society, education and political issues of that time and country.

Its popularity reaches the most diverse environments, from children to scientists, including psychoanalysts.

Its fame is such that in 1998 a copy of the first edition was sold at auction for the shocking sum of one and a half million dollars.

The origins of the book lie in a series of nonsensical stories that the author told the child Alice Liddell and her sisters during a summer boat trip, and which he later compiled under the title Alice’s Adventures Underground.

Six years after the publication of the text, a saga entitled Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There would appear, with new characters and a plot that made no reference to the first novel, although many of the things that occur in it appear as if reflected in a mirror.

Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgsonn, was born on January 27, 1832, in Daresbury, a village in Cheshire, United Kingdom. He was an Anglican deacon, mathematician, photographer and writer.

In addition to the aforementioned works, he wrote The Hunting of the Snark, a nonsensical but humorous poem in which an «improbable» crew pursues an «unimaginable» creature; The Game of Logic, a philosophical essay and mathematical problem; the fantasy novel Silvia and Bruno; and Alice for the Little Ones, an abridged version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for children up to the age of five, consisting mainly of illustrations by John Tenniel taken from the original book, but enlarged and colored.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of those works that no one should grow up without having read, a classic of universal literature in which there is no lack of lessons if read with due attention.

Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez