Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll records a suburban photoshoot in the style of Longfellow.

The distinctive rhythm and tricks of speech that Henry Longfellow used in his narrative poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855) were just begging to be parodied. Lewis Carroll could not resist the temptation, nor could he resist descending from the lofty tale of a Native American warrior to suburban photography, in which Carroll was an early pioneer.

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Alice meets Humpty Dumpty, and it turns out that she has been using words wrong all her life.

Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty exhibits all the pride that goeth before his famous fall, and also the same proprietary attitude to the meaning of words fashionable in Westminster. Here, he has just boasted of his ‘un-birthday present’ from the White King and Queen, and Alice is puzzled.

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Alice was set a poetical test of wits by the kindly (but like all the other characters, utterly maddening) White Queen.

The White Queen tells this riddling verse to Alice without explanation. What kind of fish is it that is being served?

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Alice experiences for herself the very definition of a pointless exercise.

Alice and an assortment of animals have got very wet. A mouse tries to dry them out by reciting a passage from a dry history book, but when this doesn’t work, the Dodo suggests a Caucus Race.

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