Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
is the world's first surrealist book, written in 1865, at a time when surrealism had not yet been invented. The author of this dream-like fantasy, full of puns and ironic comments on life, was Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), who devised the story for three young girls during a boat trip on the river Isis in Oxford.
Since its publication,
has been a favourite with children of all ages - and adults, too, can find deeper layers of meaning beneath the madcap adventures of Alice and her outlandish army of comic characters. The story has been translated into 125 different languages and, after the Bible, Qur'an and Shakespeare, is the most frequently quoted book in the world.