Audiobook · read by volunteers
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (version 3)
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)
Read by Peter Yearsley · 12 chapters · 2 h 43
About the book
Alice is sitting beside her sister on a riverbank, bored and sleepy, when a White Rabbit in a waistcoat runs past, muttering that he is late. She follows him down a rabbit hole, and everything she knew about the world begins to change. She grows and shrinks, argues with a caterpillar, attends a mad tea party, plays croquet with flamingos and faces a Queen who is far too fond of ordering people's heads off. Lewis Carroll's logic is perfect, his nonsense is delicious, and his heroine keeps her good manners through it all. This is the third LibriVox version of the book, and a lively, accessible reading of one of the most loved children's stories ever written.
Introduction
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), an English mathematician and logician who taught at Oxford. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865, with illustrations by John Tenniel, and it grew out of a story he told during a boat trip to Alice Liddell and her sisters, the daughters of a colleague at Christ Church.
The book made its mark immediately and has been in print ever since. It was a new kind of children's story: it had no moral lesson to deliver, and it turned the conventions of Victorian education upside down, with parodies of well-known verses and a free play of logic and language. Adults have always enjoyed it as much as children, and it has been studied, translated and adapted more often than almost any other book in English. A sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, followed in 1871.
Behind the fantasy lies a mind interested in puzzles, in paradox and in the strangeness of rules. The result is a story that can be read for pure fun, or listened to for the sheer sound of its dialogue.
This LibriVox recording is a complete reading, with twelve chapters, and lasts about two hours and forty minutes. It is the third version of the book in the LibriVox catalogue, and it is read by a volunteer. It makes a lovely listen for families. The reading is brisk and bright, and the humour comes across well. It is suitable for children and adults alike, and the shortness of the chapters makes it easy to listen in portions.
Public domain
Lewis Carroll died in 1898: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text