The Alice 100

The Alice 100 collection at UBC contains hundreds of editions of the Alice in Wonderland, as parodies, film productions, stills and other works by Caroll. This article discusses the collection, and the variety of artwork that it has inspired over the years.

In other Alice related news, the British Library has made the first edition of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground available in its entirety, and there’s a version of Alice for the iPad.


Alice as mathematical satire

The absurdity in Alice in Wonderland is often attributed to drugs or a dark trip into the subconscious. For her PhD work, Melanie Bayley examined some of the most popular scenes from a mathematical perspective, which is summed up in Alice’s adventures in algebra. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Caroll) was a rather conservative mathematician, who disagreed with many of the new mathematical theories emerging during the 19th century.

The madness of Wonderland, I believe, reflects Dodgson’s views on the dangers of this new symbolic algebra. Alice has moved from a rational world to a land where even numbers behave erratically.

I don’t imagine that Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland will delve too deeply into mathematical theory.