Alice in Wonderland: 1865 Edition with Illustrations

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?” So she was considering in her own mind (as well

“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’”

“They were learning to draw,” the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; “and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M” “Why with an M?” said Alice. “Why not?” said the March Hare. Alice was silent.

Alice's accomplishment remains a mystery. As with the Mad Hatter's conundrum ("The riddle initially had no solution"), numerous solutions have been presented but are really afterthoughts. Some have argued that the book is an allegory, but it is not; the book's principal undertones are light satire—on children's schooling and on well-known

Dodgson was ordained a deacon in the Church on December 22, 1861. He may have married and been assigned to a parish by the college if he became a priest. However, he despised parish labor and, while contemplating marriage, decided to remain single.