What IS It about Alice?

Join us for the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center's Annual Holiday Lecture What IS It about Alice?  Mark Burstein's lecture will present a summary of his thoughts about Lewis Carroll and his immortal Alice books which were first published just over 150 years ago.

Exactly what is it that makes them the most quoted novels ever written with citations on the scale of Shakespeare and the Bible? Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There have been translated into 194 languages, illustrated by hundreds of artists, and have been adapted into plays, musicals, movies, videogames, and merchandise. What IS it about Alice that makes these novels so celebrated, studied, and influential? 

This highly illustrated talk delves deeply into these questions and into the lives of Carroll and his muse. Burstein will discuss what life is like as a modern Carrollian and address the question of how these novels have transcended their initial reputation as “children’s books” to become so meaningful to adults today. 

Mark Burstein, a lifelong, second-generation collector and president emeritus of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America (LCSNA) is the longtime editor of the Knight Letter, the LCSNA’s magazine, and editor/ introducer/ contributor of thirteen books about Carroll, including The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (W. W. Norton, 2015) and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: 150th Anniversary Edition Illustrated by Salvador Dalí (Princeton University Press, 2015). 

Related programs include the exhibition The Illustrated Alice: The Imagining of Wonderland on the 6th floor of the Main Library which runs through April 1st. 

Additionally, on April 1st the Lewis Carroll Society of North America will have their annual Spring Meeting in the Library's Koret Auditorium. 

All programs at the library are free and open to the public.