The Complete Alice in Wonderland Read Free

“Alice,” hitherto priced at four shillings, net, is now to be had on the same terms as the ordinary shilling picture-books—although I feel sure that it is, in every quality (except the text itself, on which I am not qualified to pronounce), greatly superior to them. Four shillings was a perfectly reasonable price to charge, considering the very heavy initial outlay I had incurred: still, as the Public have practically said “We will not give more than a shilling for a picture-book, however artistically got-up,” I am content to reckon my outlay on the book as so much dead loss, and, rather than let the little ones, for whom it was written, go without it, I am selling it at a price which is, to me, much the same thing as giving it away.
    Christmas , 1896

A Note on the Text
     

    DUE TO the limitations of electronic formatting—and the difficulties caused by the framing of customizable font sizes—the poem “The Mouse’s Tale” does not appear in the shape of a tail (as it originally appeared in the book). The remainder of the text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , however, has been meticulously prepared with full respect toward the author’s own intentions.

Prefatory Poem
     

    All in the golden afternoon
    Full leisurely we glide;
    For both our oars, with little skill,
    By little arms are plied,
    While little hands make vain pretence
    Our wanderings to guide.
     

    Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,
    Beneath such dreamy weather,
    To beg a tale of breath too weak
    To stir the tiniest feather!
    Yet what can one poor voice avail
    Against three tongues together?
     

    Imperious Prima flashes forth
    Her edict “to begin it”;
    In gentler tones Secunda hopes
    “There will be nonsense in it!”
    While Tertia interrupts the tale
    Not more than once a minute.
     

    Anon, to sudden silence won,
    In fancy they pursue
    The dream-child moving through a land
    Of wonders wild and new,
    In friendly chat with bird or beast—
    And half believe it true.
     

    And ever, as the story drained
    The wells of fancy dry,
    And faintly strove that weary one
    To put the subject by,
    “The rest next time—” “It is next time!”
    The happy voices cry.
     

    Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
    Thus slowly, one by one,
    Its quaint events were hammered out—
    And now the tale is done,
    And home we steer, a merry crew,
    Beneath the setting sun.
     

    Alice! A childish story take,
    And, with a gentle hand,
    Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined
    In Memory’s mystic band,
    Like pilgrim’s wither’d wreath of flowers
    Pluck’d in a far-off land.

Chapter I
    Down the Rabbit-Hole
     

    ALICE WAS beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
    So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
    There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but, when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket , and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went