Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the context of "Chapter (books)"

Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with fact, history, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, fiction refers to written narratives in prose – often specifically novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglican deacon. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871), some of the most important examples of Victorian literature. He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems Jabberwocky (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. Some of Alice's nonsensical wonderland logic reflects his published work on mathematical logic.

Carroll came from a family of high-church Anglicans, and pursued his clerical training at Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar, teacher and (necessarily for his academic fellowship at the time) Anglican deacon. Alice Liddell – a daughter of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church – is widely identified as the original inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, though Carroll always denied this.

The title character in a narrative work is one who is named or referred to in the title of the work. In a performed work such as a play or film, the performer who plays the title character is said to have the title role of the piece. The title of the work might consist solely of the title character's name – such as Michael Collins or Othello – or be a longer phrase or sentence – such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The title character is commonly – but not necessarily – the protagonist of the story. Narrative works routinely do not have a title character and there is some ambiguity in what qualifies as one.

Examples in various media include Figaro in the opera The Marriage of Figaro, Giselle in the ballet of the same name, the Doctor in the TV series Doctor Who, Dr. Gregory House of the TV series House, Mario and Luigi in the video game Super Mario Bros., Harry Potter in the series of novels and films, and Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet in the play Romeo and Juliet.

The White Rabbit is a fictional and anthropomorphic character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He appears at the very beginning of the book, in chapter one, wearing a waistcoat, and muttering "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Alice follows him down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Alice encounters him again when he mistakes her for his housemaid Mary Ann and she becomes trapped in his house after growing too large. The Rabbit shows up again in the last few chapters, as a herald-like servant of the King and Queen of Hearts.

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a novel published in December 1871 by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. It is the sequel to his Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), in which many of the characters were anthropomorphic playing cards. In this second novel the theme is chess. As in the earlier book, the central figure, Alice, enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a large looking-glass (a mirror) into a world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just as in a reflection, things are reversed, including logic (for example, running helps one remain stationary, walking away from something brings one towards it, chessmen are alive and nursery-rhyme characters are real).

Among the characters Alice meets are the severe Red Queen, the gentle and flustered White Queen, the quarrelsome twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the rude and opinionated Humpty Dumpty, and the kindly but impractical White Knight. Eventually, as in the earlier book, after a succession of strange adventures, Alice wakes and realises she has been dreaming. As in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the original illustrations are by John Tenniel.

"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world.

In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verses on the pages are written in mirror writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems and reads the reflected verse of "Jabberwocky". She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape.

Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (née Liddell, /ˈlɪdəl/; 4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934) was an English woman who, in her childhood, was an acquaintance and photographic subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip became the classic 1865 children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She shared her name with "Alice", the story's protagonist, but scholars disagree about the extent to which the character was based upon her.

Henry George Liddell (/ˈlɪdəl/; 6 February 1811 – 18 January 1898) was dean (1855–1891) of Christ Church, Oxford, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (1870–1874), headmaster (1846–1855) of Westminster School (where a house is now named after him), author of A History of Rome (1855), and co-author (with Robert Scott) of the monumental work A Greek–English Lexicon, known as "Liddell and Scott", which is still widely used by students of Greek. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for Henry Liddell's daughter Alice.