Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings Revealed Hardcover – September 29, 2015

Author David Day has assembled 300 pages of mostly way-out-there guesses about secret allegorical patterns he believes might be hidden in the Wonderland story: chiefly the classical curriculum, with special emphasis on Greek mythology, mathematics and logic, plus a few esoteric subjects like Freemasonry, Theosophy, Rosicrucianism and Cabala. He also believes that every character and situation in Wonderland is meant to represent people and events in Oxford society. The actual physical book is very nicely designed by CS Richardson and will look lovely on any coffee table; The content is a frustrating mix consisting mostly of extremely-unpersuasive guesses - nearly always misrepresented as established facts - outright misinformation, and information which is accurate but borrowed from earlier Alice books without crediting those sources, all couched in a distasteful and unfair 'mean girl' tone.Guesses presented as facts: On every page Day includes educated guesses which *might* be true, but he frames as statements of certainty. Examples: "The real-life Oxford White Rabbit was Alice Liddell's family physician, Dr. Henry Wentworth Acland" (quite plausible), or "many aspects of Wonderland are parodies of Plato's Republic" (extremely implausible). A good chunk of these claims are within the realm of possibility, but as Day shares no proof, nor even a citation, palming off his guesses as facts essentially amounts to outright fibbing.Suppressed citations: Every idea in this book which I find valuable, save one, has appeared in earlier Alice books, but Day deliberately withholds citations, saying only "I cannot now even guess how many [Alice books] I have read over the last couple of decades" and providing a short list of his favorites. So if you want to follow up on a claim to learn more, Day blocks you from doing so - your only hope is to read every Alice book ever published. If you wish to learn which claims are original to Day and which he borrowed from an earlier author, Day again blocks you from learning this. In the sciences this practice is called 'suppressing citations,' and it is considered a rather underhanded attempt to steal credit for other people's work.Misinformation: Day's factual claims are often incorrect. For example, he calls the descent of Inanna 'the oldest recorded myth in world literature' - Gilgamesh is older. Day claims that Peter Llewelyn Davis was 'the inspiration for Peter Pan' - nope; J. M. Barrie said that Davies inspired his character in name only, but the press of the time jumped on the idea, tagging Davies as 'The Original Peter Pan' - that false claim hounded him all his life, and appears to be one the primary motivations behind his suicide in 1960. Obviously it suits Day's narrative to claim that the original Alice was in the same room as the original Peter Pan, but at what point does spreading easily-corrected misinformation that led to a human being's suicide become morally not-okay?Mean girl tone: A lot of this book, especially the final chapter, comes across as a character assassination of Lewis Carroll. To advance his not-entirely-fair narrative, Day describes Carroll's behavior after being excommunicated from the Liddell clan as "like a jilted lover"; well, maybe - why not tell his readers which facts he's referring to and let us draw conclusions ourselves, rather than simply stating his conclusion, withholding the facts on which those conclusions are based, and tacitly insisting that we take his conclusions on trust? (After 300 pages of showing himself to be at least sporadically untrustworthy.) Day accuses Dodgson of hypocrisy for chasing celebrities, then bridling after he became famous himself and was approached by fans - but anyone who's read a single book on Dodgson knows his objection was not to celebrity-seekers, but to anyone who insisted on identifying him as Lewis Carroll after he had gone to extreme lengths to keep his pseudonym private (Google J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith to learn how profound a betrayal this can be). One could easily make a case that Carroll ultimately became ingracious in his political disputes with Dean Liddell, but Day's suggestion that Carroll was profoundly immoral simply for disagreeing with his powerful boss comes across as grossly unfair - he seems to have mistaken oligarchic authoritarianism for morality.Extremely dubious guesses: Most of Day's apparently-original theories are of this level of quality - he suggests that 'Orange Marmalade' is meant as an anagram for 'Am Analog Dreamer.' I suspect that most readers will find this unpersuasive. The only section of this book I found entirely convincing, though hardly original to Day, is the suggestion that Carroll may have filled his story with reductio ad absurdum situations in imitation of Zeno - this is not a difficult claim to support, as Carroll identified Zeno as his favorite philosopher, wrote a variation of Zeno's race between the Tortoise and Achilles, and explicitly wrote that reductio ad absurdum scenes were his favorite type of story in the introduction to 'Sylvie and Bruno.' Most of the math patterns Day suggests seem wildly far-fetched to me, though I am not a mathematician and perhaps they are simply over my head.Day's single biggest allegorical focus is the descent of the goddess motif, especially Persephone from Greek myth (who descends down a hole, encounters hateful women called Furies, watches as King Hades passes judgement on the dead, and ultimately returns to the surface). Day uncharacteristically shares his source for the Alice/Persephone connection, the book ‘Lewis Carroll: A Portrait with Background’ (1995) by Donald Thomas, in which the Queen of Hearts is compared with the Fury Tisiphone. At first I found the similarities too thin, but I was ultimately persuaded that Carroll was indeed explicitly linking Alice and Persephone by Carroll’s 1887 article ‘Alice on the Stage,’ in which he wrote “I pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion - a blind and aimless Fury.”As a lifelong reader of books about Alice, the one apparently-new idea here which really grabbed my attention is the possibility that Carroll may have intended an allegorical parallel between the rose garden of spiritual enlightenment from Cabala (set around a fountain) and the rose garden with 'cool fountains' which Alice spends the first half of the book trying to reach; there's no absolute proof, but we know from his diaries that Carroll attended Masonic events, Freemasonry builds on Cabala, and the full parallels are striking.This book is so visually-pleasing that some readers might want it simply as an art object. We know from Carroll's surviving writings that there really are at least a handful of allegorical references to Oxford society and logic in the Alice books, and it's a good bet there are other allegorical bits in the stew. The best possible use of this book would be to whet the readers' appetite to learn more from Alice books which are perhaps a bit more level-headed and authoritative, in particular the fantastic annotated edition by Martin Gardner.

As an avid Alice in Wonderland fan, I have many Alice-related books, and this is one of the best that I have ever seen. Not only is the Lewis Carroll text presented in full, but the commentary and detailed analysis by David Day is placed next to and around the material to which it refers. The illustrations include original works by Carroll, John Tenniel, and many others, as well as photographs of the people who inspired Carroll, the places he visited, charts and graphs detailing Day's analysis, and fine art of the allusions in the text.David Day's insights and commentary are incredible as is the amount of research that he has conducted into the lives and work of Carol's contemporaries and the parts that they play in his book. His explanations are clear, organized, and academic; his sentence structure is swoon-worthy.

Great info on a time honored story. VERY detailed and gets bogged down with intricate details (especially concerning math explanations) but totally necessary in the big picture to really explain the full Alice story. A seemingly simple and silly story broken down into very complex ideas. Great for the person that LOVES details and a touch of "why they did that"

What a fabulous, thought-provoking book! I’ll never look at this story the same way again.

What an adventure, Thank you David Day for all your hard work - I first heard your interview on Australian radio and said I must get that book. Many of us these days lack a REAL education (classical that is) and need this insight to fill in the blanks. Wonderful, Amazing!

Perfect and unique!

Wonderful breakdown of the author's inspiration and really brings the book to a higher level than just a great child's story.

An OK book, but it would have been nice to have equations, maybe as footnoes, to illustrate what's being discussed.For example, the "Rabbit Hole" seems to me to be a euphamism for the null set.

Really interesting and love all the pictures, beautiful and thought-provoking.

This book is absolutely wonderful for any Alice in Wonderland fan. I bought it for my girlfriend two Christmases ago and she loves it...there is so much extra detail and information in this book, it's truly incredible. I had never seen Alice in Wonderland until we watched it together, and although I'm not a die-hard fan like she is, I can still really enjoy this book on a casual level, too. Definitely recommended!

David Day has removed the curtain surround the mysteries of Alice in Wonderland. This wonderfully illustrated book step by step slowly pulls the drawstring in such a delightfully entrancing way. The page layouts are stunningly lovely to see, adding even more delight to the unveiling message. While this book may not be for everyone, it is a treat for those who love to know why and how writers write .

Lequel de nous comprend Carroll ?Pourquoi ne pas poser d’emblée le but de l’auteur très impliqué dans la volonté de transmettre en suggérant par la métaphore du « non sens » la vie intérieure et ses constantes !

love this book, still flipping through the pagers.