Madness, death threats, wanton destruction, existential horror, a miscarriage of justice, an infant’s mysterious disappearance, Logic and Mathematics. All this can be found with Alice in Wonderland of course, the place where you will also discover that four times five equals twelve (Chapter Two).
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, to give the book it’s actual title, was written 156 years ago yet it still seems to captivate, and generate new manifestations. What some don’t always appreciate is that Lewis Carroll was the pen name of a mathematician named Charles Dodgson who also did important early work in Symbolic Logic, and so there are bits of mathematics and logic throughout Alice in Wonderland.
By Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll), published by MacMillan and Co. – page, image (cropped from original), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1630158
This is the fourteenth of a series of posts about works of fiction which I have enjoyed and which focus on or include some aspect of mathematical interest. Everything from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes short story ‘The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual’ (1893) to the miniseries ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ (2020) will make an appearance. I will discuss each particular work, and reference some related works, and expand on the mathematical principles in question.
Let’s talk first about Alice’s size. When she arrives in Wonderland she is of normal stature so she’s too large to pass through a fifteen inch high doorway in the wall of a long hall. So she drinks from a bottle labelled DRINK ME and shrinks to a height of ten inches. She forgot to keep the key to the door, a key now inaccessible on a table too high for Alice to reach. She eats a cake labelled EAT ME and grows to a height of nine feet but at least she has the key. She then holds a fan that the White Rabbit dropped and shrinks to a height of less than four inches at which point she has to swim for her life in a pool of her own tears. Eventually she gets to the March Hare’s house where she drinks from an unmarked bottle and is so large she fills the house and can’t get out. She manages to eat more cake and gets to a height of three inches. During her travels across Wonderland she eats from the Caterpillar’s mushroom and first her head ends up resting on her feet, then she grows so much her head ends up high above the trees suspended on her neck which has come to resemble a very long snake and she can’t even see her own shoulders which are hidden beneath the treetops far below. She gets back to a height this time of nine inches, then when she returns to the long hall she gets herself back to twelve inches. Finally, during the climactic trial scene, she grows large again (the King of Hearts estimate her height as one mile, and the Queen of Hearts’ estimate is two miles) but she finally awakens from her dream returning to her original height.
By John Tenniel – John Tenniel, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=629633
T.S.Eliot has said that he was thinking of Alice and the door she couldn’t get through when he wrote the following lines from Burnt Norton:
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden
There are various references to numbers and Mathematics here and there in the book. There are twelve jurors in the trial scene (Chapter Eleven) and three people in the treacle-well (Chapter Seven) – the three people are Lacie, Tillie and Elsie. This is an in-joke from Carroll. Lacie is an anagram of ALICE, i.e. Alice Liddell who was the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland. Tillie is Alice Liddell’s sister Edith whose nickname was Matilda, and Elsie is L.C., i.e. Lorina Charlotte who is also a sister of Alice Liddell. All three were on the journey on the river when Carroll first told them the story of Alice in Wonderland which he made up as he went along.
By Lewis Carroll – http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/ela-1.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=736835
There is a reference in the book to the four branches of Arithmetic: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision (Chapter Nine). There is also the reference to the distance to the centre of the Earth, i.e. 4000 miles, in Chapter One, as Alice falls down the rabbit hole, at which point Alice wonders whether she is going to fall all the way through to the other side of the Earth and what that would be like. Plutarch, Francis Bacon, Voltaire and Galileo have all wondered the same thing. In fact, an object undertaking such a descent would fall increasingly quickly but with decreasing acceleration until it reached the centre of the Earth at which point acceleration would reach zero. After that it would slow down while increasing deceleration until it got to the opening at the other end. Then it would fall back again to its starting point, assuming no air resistance and zero coriolis effect (unless the hole went from pole to pole), and it would theoretically oscillate back and forth forever. In Lewis Carroll’s later work, Sylvie and Bruno, Carroll describes how to use gravity to run trains by sending them through tunnels underground using these same principles.
By Henry Holiday (1839-1927) after Lewis Carroll [Real name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832-1896) – The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits by Lewis Carroll, MacMillan and Co, Limited, St. Martin’s Street, London, 1931., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7122447
The best estimates in 1865 (when Alice in Wonderland was published (for the time it would take to travel from one side of the world to the other through the centre is 42 minutes. That same number appears throughout Carroll’s works. In Alice in Wonderland there are three examples:
- There are 42 original illustrations for the book by John Tenniel.
- Alice’s attempts at multiplication (explained in detail below) break down at base 42.
- The King of Hearts invokes Rule 42 in Chapter 11 when he says “all persons more than a mile high have to leave the court”
- In Through the Looking Glass The White Queen gives her age as “one hundred and one, five months and a day”, and assuming the Red Queen is the same age, their combined ages equals 74088 days which equals 42 x 42 x 42 days.
- In Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark Rule 42 of the Code is referenced in the Preface (“No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm”)
- Also in The Hunting of the Snark the Baker had “forty-two boxes, all carefully packed. With his name painted clearly on each”
By Michael Hughes – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10031710 adams inspired “Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy” H2G2
Douglas Adams was also fascinated by the number 42 and the fact that he named the episodes of his radio play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘fits’ just as Carroll did with The Hunting of the Snark suggests that Adams may have been influenced by Carroll. For example:
- In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the first part of his five part trilogy, we find out that the answer to the ultimate question of Life, The Universe and Everything is 42. It was calculated by a supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years.
- In the fourth part of his five part trilogy, So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, there are 42 chapters.
- In the fifth part of his five part trilogy, Mostly Harmless, 42 is the street address of Stavromula Beta.
Of course, I think that I could find half a dozen references to a lot of other numbers as well if I have all of the works of Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams combined to retrieve data from. None of those numbers would have any actual significance. Some people ignorant of probability have thought that they had discovered amazing secrets in the form of mystical numbers and such in large data sets such as the works of William Shakespeare or The Bible when in fact by sheer probability it would be amazing if they hadn’t found recurring completely insignificant number patterns. Martin Gardner, among others, have rigorously discredited this tendency, exemplified by The Bible Code and other such nonsense.
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=629709
The mathematical concept of lesser also makes an appearance. When Alice is talking with the Mock Turtle about school, Alice asks “And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” The Mock Turtle replies, “ten hours the first day, nine the next and so on . . . That’s the reason they’re called lessons, because they lessen each day.” When Alice asks how he managed on the twelfth he answers, “That’s enough about lessons.” Earlier, in the chapter The Mad Tea Party the Mad Hatter tells Alice, “it’s always tea time and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.” Alice replies, “Then you keep moving round [the table] I suppose?” and the Hatter says, “Exactly so, as the things get used up.” When Alice asks: “But what happens when you come to the beginning again?” the March Hare says “Suppose we change the subject.”
In another mathematical reference, during the trial scene the Mad Hatter arrives holding his tea cup and apologizes saying that he hadn’t finished his tea when he was called to court. When the King asks when he began he replies the fourteenth of March, the March Hare corrects him saying it was the fifteenth and the Dormouse corrects them both saying it was the sixteenth. The jury wrote the numbers down, added them up, and converted them to shillings and pence. Lovely.
By John Tenniel – Lewis Carroll, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=629715
Perhaps the most interesting example of Mathematics comes in Chapter Two. At one point Alice isn’t sure that she is Alice, things have been so puzzling as she keeps changing size, so she decides to find out whether she still knows what she used to know, for example her multiplication facts. So she attempts to recite them, saying: “four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four time seven is – oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!” Given that Lewis Carroll was a masterful mathematician, one wonders whether there’s more here than meets the eye. As Martin Gardner points out, traditionally the multiplication table ends with the twelves. If we continue the way that Alice is going, we get to four times eleven is eighteen and four times twelve is nineteen, where one would traditionally stop. So, indeed, Alice would never get to twenty. A.L. Taylor has a much more interesting, and complicated, explanation, however, in his book The White Knight. Four times five actually is 12, if one is using base 18 instead of base 10 which is the base we usually use (i.e. the decimal system with its ten symbols 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and 9, and its columns using powers of ten). Four times six is 24 in base 10 but it’s 13 in base 21, four times seven is indeed 14 in base 24 and so on. This pattern breaks down, however, when we get to twenty. Four times thirteen is 52 in base 10 and it would be 20 in base 42 if the pattern held. However, 20 in base 42 is 84 (i.e. 2 x 42 plus 0 x 1) not 52 so the pattern breaks down. So again, as Alice says, she never gets to twenty. Q.E.D.
There is an extraordinary set of characters in Carroll’s tale, including three conversational playing cards in Chapter Nine named Two, Five and Seven. They seem quite at home with their names. This is in stark contrast to the character Number Six in Patrick McGoohan’s celebrated television series The Prisoner. In that series retired secret agents are kidnapped and placed in a place called The Village where they are interrogated, manipulated, brutalized and sometimes executed. All the Village residents are also referred to as numbers – no names allowed. The main rebellious protagonist is, unlike the Wonderland playing cards, quite opposed to being referred to as a number, and he proclaims loudly more than once “I am not a number! I am a free man.” In Evgeny Zamyatin’s 1924 Russian dystopia We the oppressed citizens are also referred to only as numbers.
By Boris Kustodiev – http://az.lib.ru/img/z/zamjatin_e_i/text_0188/index.shtml, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1160256
On a more mathematically philosophical level, Martin Gardner comments that the phrase “grin without a cat” used to describe the Cheshire Cat in Chapter Six, is a good description of Pure Mathematics. Mathematical theorems often have practical real world applications but the theorems themselves are other-worldly abstractions or, in the words of the noted mathematician / logician Bertrand Russell, they are: “remote even from the pitiful facts of Nature . . . an ordered chaos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home”.
An important element in Mathematics is Logic, whether it’s deductive, inductive or abductive reasoning. Lewis Carroll wrote several pioneering works on Symbolic Logic, and he also gave lectures on the subject at girls’ schools (Carroll’s real life gender politics is a story for another day). There are several amusing examples of logical (and illogical) reasoning in Alice in Wonderland.
By John Tenniel – http://www.themorgan.org/collections/collections.asp?id=570, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34341858
- When Alice asks The Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go he replies “in that direction [he indicates with his paw] lives a Hatter, and in that direction [he waves his other paw] lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad”. When Alice says she wants to avoid mad people the cat says: “Oh, you ca’n’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” When Alice asks the cat how he knows that she’s mad, he says: “You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here.”
- Furthermore, the cat ‘proves’ that he’s mad by saying that, unlike a dog, he growls when he’s pleased and he wags his tail when when he’s angry. Alice can only reply, when she hears the cat demonstrating growling: “I call it purring, not growling.”
- At one point during the mad tea party (Chapter Seven) the Mad Hatter takes out his watch, looks at it, and asks Alice what day it is. She replies that it was the fourth and the Mad Hatter sighs, saying “Two days wrong! I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!” and he looks angrily at the March Hare who meekly says: “It was the best butter.”
- The Mad Hatter recounts the story of him singing to the Queen of Hearts and doing a bad job with the song’s rhythmic time signature. The Queen comments loudly that he was murdering the time (a comment often made by patient music teachers worldwide. It may also be applied to stand-up comics, a profession in which timing is everything, and something only the best comics master well). As the Mad Hatter pointed out earlier, time is not an ‘it’ but a ‘him’ and previously the Mad Hatter and Time had got along famously. But on the occasion of he concert for the Queen of Hearts, not so much, so ever since then, at least for the Mad Hatter, Time is peeved so it is always six o’clock for the Mad Hatter, and therefore always tea-time. Arthur Stanley Eddington has compared the Hatter’s dilemma regarding Time with the particular aspect of Dutch mathematician and physicist William de Sitter’s theoretical model of the cosmos in which time stands still eternally. He developed the model as a solution to the Einstein field equations of General Relativity.
- After a conversation about three people living in a treacle well, the March Hare says earnestly to Alice, “Take some more tea.” Alice says, offended: “I’ve had nothing yet, so I ca’n’t take more.” The Hatter remarks: “You mean you ca’n’t take less. It’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
- Jumping ahead to the next chapter the Cheshire Cat returns, at least his head returns, without a body, to hover over the croquet grounds grinning. When he annoys the Queen of Hearts she orders her cards to behead the cat which presents a great problem. How do you behead a cat that only has a head? If they don’t follow orders, however, they will probably be beheaded themselves. Fortunately the cat quietly disappears. Problem solved.
- During the trial of the Knave a mysterious letter is found by the White Rabbit containing verses that make no sense. When a Juryman asks whether the verses were written in the Knave’s handwriting the White Rabbit informs him that they are not. The King of Hearts responds: “He must have imitated somebody else’s hand”. If it had been in the Knave’s handwriting then the conclusion would have been that the Knave had written the verses. In other words, the conclusion is always going to be that the Knave was guilty of writing the verses regardless of the handwriting style. Then when the Knave insists that he didn’t write the verses and notes that the verses are not signed at the end. The King says: “You must have meant some mischief or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.” One imagines that if the verses had been signed with a name other than the Knave’s then the King would ask the Knave why he used an alias, and the King would have concluded that only someone guilty of something would use an alias. Once again, the King will find the Knave guilty no matter what. Finally, the Queen of Hearts declares “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” Of course the increasingly brave Alice responds to this by saying: “Stuff and nonsense!”
- During the Knave’s trial a set of verses were read out, verses which made no sense. This reminds one of the Duchess’ morals from Chapter Nine which reads as follows: “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”. When Alice confesses that she didn’t quite follow the meaning of this particular moral, the Duchess replies: “That’s nothing to what I could say if I chose.” This is similar to an incident in Through the Looking Glass which was Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland. In that sequel Alice comes across the poem JABBERWOCKY and she reacts to that bit of verse like this: “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are!” (Chapter One).
By John Tenniel – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5827242
In terms of the mysterious disappearance of an infant, and instances of wanton destruction, both can be seen in Chapter Six. Alice finds herself outside the house of the Duchess talking to a Footman who also happens to be a frog when suddenly the door opens and a large plate comes flying out headed for the Footman’s head. It just grazes his nose. When Alice enters the house she sees the Duchess holding a baby in the kitchen while nearby the Cook “set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby . . . the Duchess took no notice of them even when they hit her, and the baby was howling so much already that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.” Alice soon exits with the baby at which point the baby abruptly morphs into a baby piglet.
Besides madness and death, there is existential horror in Alice in Wonderland which is echoed in a similar incident in the book’s sequel, Through the Looking Glass. In that later book Tweedledum and Tweedledee inform Alice that she’s simply a character in The Red King’s dream as he lies nearby asleep. They insist that if the Red King were to wake up Alice (as well as both Tweedledum and Tweedledee) would disappear like the flame on a candle that is blown out. When Alice protests, and starts to cry, Tweedledum disdainfully says “I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears?” In Alice in Wonderland, in Chapter One, things are a bit less dramatic, but Alice takes a drink from a bottle marked DRINK ME and she starts to grow ever smaller. She eventually stops before she gets too small but until she does stop she thinks: “for it might end, you know, in my going out altogether like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?”
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=629704
When all is said and done, and the Logic and the Mathematics have been carefully examined in Alice in Wonderland, we might remember what the Duchess says in Chapter Six:
“I never could abide figures”.
One could put together many Alice / Wonderland / Lewis Carroll lists such as:
- The hundreds of sequels / pastiches and parodies of the Alice stories
- The many references in popular culture (e.g. in works by Agatha Christie and O. Henry)
- The hundreds of references in popular music including the many songs written for film and television productions
- A list of the illustrators of Alice in Wonderland (in a previous post I listed many of the illustrators of Through the Looking Glass but that was a somewhat shorter list)
However, I will end this post with a handful of particularly interesting or unusual popular songs with reference to the Alice books:
Illustration by John Tenniel, published in 1872, in the Public Domain.
- TOM PETTY – Don’t Come Around Here No More
By far the best interpretation I’ve seen, this is an elaborate music video back in the day when music videos were new and incredibly detailed and ambitious. This is a frightening video completely enveloped in Wonderland visuals. Petty is wonderfully sinister and the ending is surprising and bizarre. Notice the elaborate and menacing caterpillar on the mushroom starting at the 13 second mark. That is Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and he’s playing a sitar. The song was written by Dave Stewart and Tom Petty.
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8&ab_channel=JonathanDewbreJonathanDewbre )
2. JEFFERSON AIRPLANE – White Rabbit (written by Grace Slick)
This is probably the best known of the rock songs inspired by the Alice books. Written by powerful lead singer Grace Slick the chord progressions and harmonies of the song are actually quite intricate but this is neither the time nor place. This is a clip from 1967 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0&ab_channel=dustasdudustasdu ).
Here is a live version of the same song from 2016 from the Jimmy Kimmel Show coinciding with the release of Tim Burton’s film Alice Through the Looking Glass. This is sung by Pink ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya8HXx2VxFU&ab_channel=TXJDBTXJDB )
This last version is by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals from 2009 with quite a good lead guitar bit starting at 26 seconds ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vy1OoBAL-E&ab_channel=GracePotterGracePotter )
3. THE BEATLES – I Am The Walrus (by John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
This is the only good thing that came out of the Beatles’ disastrous film Magical Mystery Tour but as a musical composition it is complex and wonderfully executed and I count it as one off their four or five best recordings. John Lennon was a great fan of the Alice books, hence the song’s title. The lyrics also reference The Eggman which Lennon says refers to Humpty Dumpty from the Alice books. There are an unusual number of key modulations, and an inspired ascending / descending chromatic contrapuntal fadeout while lines from Shakespeare’s King Lear can be heard in the background ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Jm5epJr10&ab_channel=TheBeatlesTheBeatlesOfficialArtistChannel )
One of the lines from the song is “See how they fly like Lucy in the Sky” which is a reference to another Beatles song, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, which Lennon has said was his attempt to create a world like Wonderland. Lennon has commented that the opening line, “Picture yourself in a boat on a river” was inspired by Chapter Five of Through the Looking Glass in which Alice and a sheep are rowing a boat down a river. Notice that the verses of the song (in G # major) are in 6 / 4 time but the chorus (in F# major) is in 4 / 4, and yet the bar lengths have been constructed so that each beat in the chorus is exactly 150% as long as each note in the verses. Also, this was a period of time when members of The Beatles were taking the illegal hallucinogen LSD regularly. When someone noticed that the initials of the main words in the title of this song were LSD they were asked about it. Lennon said that it was just a coincidence and that the song was inspired by a piece of artwork his three year old son Julian came home with from nursery school with one day. The picture featured a classmate of Julian’s named Lucy O’Donnell. Years later McCartney confirmed that the song had indeed been inspired by Julian’s artwork but that the imagery also came from their drug experiences. Here is the track: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naoknj1ebqI&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic )
By Greg2600 – https://www.flickr.com/photos/greg2600/41258970552, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76701343
FILMS AND TELEVISION PRODUCTIONS OF THE ALICE BOOKS
This gives you some concept of the enduring popularity of the Alice stories, and the wide range of possible interpretations internationally. Some of these are wonderful and some are atrocious, but they all reflect the longevity of the Alice stories.
NEWSREEL:
1932 – Alice in U.S. Land – Paramount News. News footage of Alice Hargreaves, age eighty, arriving to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lewis Carroll. Alice Hargreaves (née Liddell) was Lewis Carroll’s child friend and the inspiration for the Alice in the two Alice books. She and her two sisters took a trip down the river with Carroll in 1862 as he told them the story of Alice in Wonderland, making it up as he went and it was Alice who asked him later to write the story down for her. Running time: seventy-five seconds.
FEATURE FILMS:
1903 – Alice in Wonderland – Directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow. Filmed in the UK. Alice is played by May Clark. Running time: ten minutes.
1910 – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (A Fairy Comedy) – Filmed in the U.S. Alice is played by Gladys Hulette. Running time: ten minutes
1915 – Alice in Wonderland – directed by W.W. Young. Filmed in the U.S. This contains scenes from both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Alice is played by Viola Savoy. Running time: fifty minutes.
1927 – Alice thru a Looking Glass – This contains just the Through the Looking Glass scenes from the 1915 production, with 1927 intertitles added.
1931 – Alice in Wonderland – directed by Bud Pollard. Screen adaptation by John F. Godson and Ashley Miller. Filmed in the U.S., this is the first Alice film with sound. Alice is played by Ruth Gilbert.
1933 – Alice in Wonderland – directed by Norman McLeod, screenplay by Joseph J. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies. Music by Dimitri Tiomkin, filmed in the U.S. Alice is played by Charlotte Henry. Running time: ninety minutes. Also starring W.C. Fields, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton, Edna May Oliver, May Robson and Baby LeRoy.
1948 – Alice au pays des merveilles – directed by Marc Maurette and Dallas Bowers, filmed in France and the U.K. Script by Henry Myers, Edward Flisen and Albert Cervin. All of the characters are marionettes except for Alice who ia a live adult, played by Carol Marsh. Animation by Lou Bunin. French and English versions of the film were made. Walt Disney attempted unsuccessfully to stop production, distribution and display of the film.
1951 – Alice in Wonderland – A Walt Disney animated film in colour. Alice’s voice by Kathryn Beaumont. Running time: seventy-five minutes. This was poorly received at the time but has since made Disney a great deal of money. Made in the U.S.
1966 – Alice of Wonderland in Paris – directed by Gene Deitch, this is an animated film. Although the main character is Alice from Alice in Wonderland the story has nothing to do with the Wonderland story. Alice is played by Norma MacMillan, also starring Howard Morris and Carl Reiner. Running time: 52 minutes
1972 – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – directed by William Sterling. Musical direction by John Barry. Wide screen, colour production, made in the U.K.. Starring Peter Sellers, Dame Flora Robson, Dennis Price and Sir Ralph Richardson. Alice is played by Fiona Fullerton. Running time: ninety minutes.
1976 – Alice in Wonderland, an X-Rated Musical Comedy – directed by Bud Townsend, made in the U.S., Alice is played by Kristine DeBell. Running time: 88 minutes.
1977 – Jabberwocky – directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Michael Palin with an uncredited cameo by Terry Jones, all three of whom were members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This is an adaptation of the poem Jabberwocky from Through the Looking Glass. Screenplay by Terry Gilliam and Charles Alverson. Also starring John LeMesurier. Running time: 106 minutes.
1982 – Alicja – directed by Jacek Bromski and Jerzy Gruza, this was co-produced by Belgian and Polish film companies. Alice is played by French actor Sophie Barjac and is a modern re-telling of the Alice in Wonderland story. Running time: 96 minutes
1985 – Dreamchild – directed by Gavin Millar, written by Dennis Potter. A nightmarish fictionalized account of the visit of eighty-year-old Alice Hargreaves (née Liddell) to New York on the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lewis Carroll. Alice is the child friend of Carroll who was the model and inspiration for Alice in Wonderland. She and her two sisters in 1862 took a trip down the river with Carroll and on the way Carroll told the sisters the story of Alice in Wonderland, making it up as he went, and it was Alice who asked him to write it down for her. The elderly Alice is played by Coral Browne and the young Alice is played by Amelia Shankley. Ian Holm plays Lewis Carroll. Running time: 94 minutes.
1988 – Néco z Alenky – directed and written by Jan Svankmajer, a stop-animation surrealist dark fantasy film made in Czechoslovakia. The title in English means ‘Something From Alice’ however the English version of the film is simply called Alice. Running time: 86 minutes.
2009 – Malice in Wonderland – directed by Simon Fellows and written by Jayson Rothwell. It is only roughly based on Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland receiving consistently negative reviews. Alice is played by Maggie Grace. Running time: 87 minutes
2010 – Alice in Wonderland – a Walt Disney film directed by Tim Burton, written by Linda Woolverton. Alice returns to Wonderland and saves the day by fighting and defeating The Jabberwock. The film was highly successful grossing more than one billion dollars worldwide. Starring Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter and the voices of Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry. Alice is played by Mia Wasikowska. Running time:108 minutes.
2016 – Alice Through the Looking Glass – directed by Tim Burton, this is a sequel to the 2010 film Alice in Wonderland (see previous entry). Again starring Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter, and also starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Alice is played again by Mia Wasikowska. Running time:114 minutes. One of the voice parts was done by Alan Rickman. This was his last performance; he died four months before the film’s release.
2020 – Come Away – directed by Brenda Chapman, this consistently panned fantasy takes characters from Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan and makes a narrative mess with them. Running time: 94 minutes.
ALICE SEQUENCES IN OTHER FILMS:
1930 – Puttin’ On The Ritz – directed by Edward H. Sloman with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. There is a six-minute Alice in Wonderland dance sequence by Joan Bennett in the film.
1938 – My Lucky Star – There is a ten minute skating sequence by Norwegian Olympic champion skater Sonja Henie with Henie as Alice skating with various characters from the story.
ANIMATION:
1933 – Betty in Blunderland – directed by Dave Fleischer. Betty Boop follows Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass characters from a jigsaw puzzle down the rabbit hole. Running time: ten minutes.
1936 – Thru the Mirror – A Walt Disney Mickey Mouse animated short based on Through the Looking Glass. Running time: nine minutes
1955 – Sweapea Thru the Looking Glass – directed by Jack Kiney. Sweapea goes through a looking glass then down a gold hole ending up at the Wonderland Golf Club. Running time: six minutes.
1965 – Curly in Wonderland – The Three Stooges in Wonderland. One of those awful unfunny Three Stooges shorts. Running time: four minutes.
1966 – Alice in Wonderland – adapted by Sandy Glass for the Festival of Family Classics Television Show. Running time: thirty minutes.
1967 – Abbott and Costello in Blunderland – Hanna-Barbera Productions. Running time: five minutes.
1971 – Zvahlav aneb Saticky Slameneho Huberta – produced by Katky Films, Prague. Screenplay, design and direction by Jan Svankmajer. This begins with a recitation of ‘Jabberwocky’. Running time: fourteen minutes.
1980 – Scooby in Wonderland – Hanna-Barbera Productions. Running time: twenty-two minutes.
1987 – Alice Through the Looking Glass – Janet Waldo, age sixty-three, stars as Alice in this Australian animated film.
1987 – The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland – Running time: seventy-six minutes.
1989 – The Hunting of the Snark / Jabberwocky – narration by James Earl Jones. Running time: twenty-seven minutes.
1993 – Hello Kitty in Alice in Wonderland – Running time: thirty minutes
1995 – Miyaki-chan in Wonderland – Anime – Running time: thirty Minutes
1996 – Alice in Wonderland – Jetlag Productions – Running time: forty-seven minutes
2007 – Alice in Wonderland: What’s the Matter With Hatter? – BKN International – Running time: forty-seven minutes
2008 – Abby in Wonderland – a Sesame Street adaptation – Running time: forty-one minutes
2009 – Mickey’s Adventures in Wonderland – The Disney Channel – Running time: fifty minutes
2010 – The Wonder Pets: Adventures in Wonderland – Running time: twenty-two minutes
2014 – Dora in Wonderland – with Mel Brooks as the Mad Hatter – Running time: thirty minutes
TELEVISION PRODUCTIONS:
1950 – Alice in Wonderland – staged at the Ford Theatre. Alice is played by Iris Mann
1966 – Alice in Wonderland, or What’s A Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? – Hanna-Barbera Productions. Book by Bill Dana, music and lyrics by Lee Adams and Charles Strauss, animation voices: Janet Waldo as Alice, Sammy Davis Jr. as the Cheshire Cat, Bill Dana as The White Knight – Running time: fifty minutes
1966 – Alice Through the Looking Glass – script b Albert Simmons, with Judi Rolin as Alice, Jimmy Durante as Humpty Dumpty, Nanette Fabay as the White Queen, Agnes Moorhead as the Red Queen, Jack Palance as the Jabberwock, Ricardo Montalban as the White King and The Smothers Brothers as Tweedeldum and Tweedledee – Running time: ninety minutes
1967 – Alice in Wonderland – produced by the BBC, directed by Jonathan Miller, the cast for this one is exceptional, with Sir John Gielgud as the Mock Turtle, Sir Michael Redgrave as the Caterpillar, Peter Sellers as the King of Hearts, Peter Cook as the Mad Hatter and Anne-Marie Mallik as Alice
1970 – Alice in Wonderland – French television production directed by Jean-Christophe Averty.
1973 – Through the Looking Glass – BBC, adapted and directed by James MacTaggart. Alice is played by Sarah Sutton
1985 – Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass – produced by Irwin Allen. Songs by Steve Allen, with Natalie Gregory as Alice. The cast includes Jayne Meadows, Sammy Davis Jr., Robert Morley and Red Buttons
1986 – Alice in Wonderland – a BBC production by Barry Lett. Alice is played b Kate Dorning.
1991 – Adventures in Wonderland – This is a live action musical series from Disney. The series ran through 1995 with one hundred episodes with Alice played by Elisabeth Harnois.
1999 – Alice in Wonderland – This three hour production was directed by Nick Willing. This was the first Alice production with extensive computer enhancement, including 875 post-production visual effects. Alice was played by Tina Majorino. The production also starred Martin Short, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lloyd, Peter Ustinov, Miranda Richardson, Gene Wilder, Robbie Coltrane and George Wendt.
2009 – Alice – This was a miniseries reinterpreting the original story, with Ccaterina Scorsone as Alice.
2013 – Once Upon a Time in Wonderland – This was a spin-off of the series Once Upon a Time with Sophie Lowe as Alice and John Lithgow as the White Rabbit.
DIRECT TO DVD
1999 – Alice in Wonderland – Goldhill Home Media – an animated film available in six languages. Running time: fifty-one minutes
2004 – Jabberwocky – Joyce Media, this is taken from an older film and signed in American Sign Language.
2004 – Sincerely Yours: A Film About Lewis Carroll – live action – Running time: twenty-four minutes
2009 – The Life of Lewis Carroll / Alice (2010) – these two documentaries are packaged together by Arts Magic.
2010 – Alice in Wonderland – Starring Dinah Shore, this took a 1948 NBC radio broadcast of the Alice story and added terrible primitive vector animation. Running time: fifty-seven minutes.
2010 – Initiation of Alice in Wonderland: The Looking Glass of Lewis Carroll – produced by Reality Films, this contains many inaccuracies – Running time: seventy-five minutes
EDUCATIONAL FILMS:
1972 – Curious Alice – made for the National Institute for Mental Health in the U.S., this colour film is part of a drug course for elementary school children. Various characters from the stories take various illegal drugs but the Cheshire Cat, Alice’s conscience, saves Alice from doing the same – Running time: fifteen minutes
1978 – Alice in Wonderland: A Lesson in Appreciating Differences – This Disney live action production includes the flower sequence from the 1951 Disney Alice in Wonderland feature film then talks about how awful the flowers were to Alice simply because she was different.
By Hepworth & Co., London – Source: http://www.alice-in-wonderland.fsnet.co.uk/aspects/may_clark_03.jpg, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9128183
NEXT POST – THE DECLINR AND FALL OF THE HUMAN RACE – NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
LIKELY STORIES already posted, ready or in the planning stage:
1. NORTH OF THE NORTH POLE – FLATLAND by Edwin A. Abbott (and other trans-dimensional stories from 1884 to 2017) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/03/north-of-the-north-pole-likely-story-1/
2. QUEEN VICTORIOUS – THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT – the 2020 Netflix miniseries (and other chess-related stories from 1624 to 2020) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/queen-victorious-likely-story-2/
3. ONCE UPON A TIME – THE TIME MACHINE by H.G.Wells (and other time travel stories from 1838 to 2018) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/24/once-upon-a-time-likely-story-3/
4. THE DYNAMICS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES – THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an original Sherlock Holmes story https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/the-dynamics-of-sherlock-holmes-likely-story-4/
5. LOOKING THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS – THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS by Lewis Carroll (with its existential nihilism, death jokes, and its foreshadowing of quantum physics) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/14/looking-through-the-looking-glass-likely-story-5/
6. DANCE OF THE DEAD – THE PRISONER – the 1968 television enigma created by Patrick McGoohan https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/dance-of-the-dead-likely-story-6/
7. I FOUGHT THE LAW – INFLEXIBLE LOGIC by Russell Maloney, about monkeys typing (and other probability stories) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/28/i-fought-the-law-likely-story-7/
8. ALL YOU ZOMBIES by Robert Heinlein (a sixty-three year old trans story) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/all-you-zombies-likely-story-8/
9. UNSAFE HOUSE – – AND HE BUILT A CROOKED HOUSE by Robert Heinlein, and THE CAPTURED CROSS-SECTION by Miles J. Breuer (and other stories about the fourth dimension from 1887 to 1997) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/12/unsafe-house-likely-story-9/
10. ONSCREEN MATH – GOOD WILL HUNTING – the 1997 film starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams about an unusual Math genius (and other Math movies) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/19/onscreen-math-good-will-hunting-likely-story-10/
11. NOTHING TO SEE HERE – THE LAST MAGICIAN by Bruce Elliott (and other science fiction stories that are extreme, controversial and dangerous) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/nothing-to-see-here-likely-story-11/
12. CHILD’S PLAY – THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster with its dozens of puns (and other mathematical children’s stories) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/childs-play-likely-story-12/
13. THE MATHEMATICAL IDEOLOGY OF DEATH (including ALL THE KING’S MEN by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and other stories about chess, political science and ethical philosophy) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/06/09/the-mathematical-ideology-of-death-likely-story-13/
14. DOWN UNDER – ALICE IN WONDERLAND and its many manifestations
15. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HUMAN RACE: NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell
16. GUIDE TO THE GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – Douglas Adams’ five part trilogy starting with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
17. THEY CANNOT TOLERATE OUR MINDS – THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS – A slow and ghastly invasion tale
18. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE? – A HANDMAID’S TALE – Has it happened already?
19. THE JABBERWOCK’S SECRET and A MONSTROUS LITTLE BOY – Two extraordinary stories about extraordinary children.
20. MOEBIUS TALES – A set of stories that feature the mathematically famous Moebius Band which has only one side and one edge.
The best site I’ve come across that deals with literary Mathematics in general is this one, a database compiled and maintained by Alex Kasman, with over a thousand entries and a lot of good information about each one, mainly focusing on novels, short stories and plays but also including comic books and films, with works from as recently as 2020:
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/
I greatly enjoyed all the works that are the main focus of my posts. However, I have not read every entry on the lists that often accompany the posts, so some may be mathematically interesting but of mediocre literary quality. If you’re thinking of trying any of the stories on any of these posts you might first check out the story’s entry on this site to get more details, and opinions, about the story.
There have been many works with mathematical elements and in some cases the mathematics is the work’s main feature, in other cases the mathematics is interesting but peripheral to other elements. The single best, most comprehensive source of information about these works is Alex Kasman’s site, above, but there are other sources also worth mentioning:
1. Math Goes to the Movies by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross, 2012, is particularly comprehensive and detailed, with many photos and diagrams. It does, however, by necessity, deal with only a sample of the Mathematics-oriented films out there. For an even more comprehensive source of information on more than 800 films, take a look at the website the authors of this book have put together:
https://www.qedcat.com/moviemath/index.html#3
2. Mathematics in Popular Culture edited by Jessica K. Sklar and Elizabeth S. Sklar is a series of essays on the appearance of Mathematics in film, fiction, games, television and other media, 2012.
3. The modern interest in mathematical literature started, most would agree, with a seminal work from 1958 which many still speak about with reverence. The book is called Fantasia Mathematica, an anthology edited by Clifton Fadiman. It contains high quality works or excerpts from works by Plato, Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Lewis Carroll and Martin Gardner, amongst others.
4. With the unexpected popularity of Fantasia Mathematica Clifton Fadiman came out with a follow-up collection of mathematical literature in 1962 called The Mathematical Magpie. It contains writing by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Mark Twain, Stephen Leacock, Bertrand Russell, Lewis Carroll, Norton Juster and William Wordsworth, amongst others.
5. Imaginary Numbers is an anthology of mathematical stories, diversions, poems and musings edited by William Frucht, 1999. This contains works by Lewis Carroll, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Connie Willis, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman and Yevgeny Zamyatin, amongst others.
6. Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder, edited by Rudy Rucker, 1987. This contains works by Greg Bear, Ian Watson, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Martin Gardner and Robert Sheckley. This is dedicated to Clifton Fadiman.
7. Reality Conditions, short mathematical fiction by Alex Kasman, 2005, writing by the webmaster of the database mentioned above, this includes stories about Klein bottles, The Goldbach Conjecture, electromagnetism equations and other wonderful topics.
According to The Kidd 
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