Interesting facts about the real Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland

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27.01.17 10:25

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - do you know this name? Surely, those who are interested in the work of Lewis Carroll will answer in the affirmative, because that was the name of the British scientist and writer who invented Alice's adventures in Wonderland. The facts are that the author of the legendary fairy tales preferred to distinguish between his mathematical and philosophical writings and fiction, so I came up with a pseudonym. Published in 1865, the first book about Alice was very popular, it was translated into 176 languages, and how many times the character was used in film and television! Moreover, various adaptations were released - from almost verbatim to free “variations on a theme”.

Today marks the 185th anniversary of the birth of Lewis Carroll, for the anniversary we have prepared 10 facts about Alice in Wonderland.

"Alice in Wonderland": facts about the most absurdist fairy tale

She was a brunette!

The writer was inspired by the daughter of the dean of one of the Oxford colleges (Christ Church, where Carroll himself taught). In honor of Alice Liddell, he named his heroine. When the dean arrived at the place of service (in 1856), he had five children, Alice was then 4 years old. True, there is one significant difference between the prototype and the character: the real Alice She was a brunette, not a blonde.

Carroll almost went broke

Interesting fact: "Alice in Wonderland" was illustrated by a famous English artist John Tenniel. When he saw the first copy of the book, he was horrified - it seemed to him that the drawings were reproduced poorly. To reprint the circulation, Carroll spent more than half of his annual income and ended up in a financial hole. Fortunately, "Alice" was an instant success.

First film based on the book

You must have watched Burton's fantasy with Mia Wasikowska. And the first film about Alice was released by directors Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stowe - in 1903. At that time it was the longest movie in the UK: a full 12 minutes! Alas, the copy of the film is not very well preserved.

Cheshire cat tree

“My reality is different from yours,” said the Cheshire Cat to Alice. He often left only a smile (hanging in the air near the tree on whose bough he sat). It is said that such a tree also actually exists: in the garden behind the Liddell house on the grounds of Christ Church College.

Queen in awe!

"Alice in Wonderland" as claimed historical facts loved by Queen Victoria. The crowned lady praised the author and suggested that Carroll would dedicate the next book to her. Alas, the purely algebraic work “Information from the Theory of Determinants” published in 1866 must have disappointed the Queen.

soup for the poor

Among the host of strange characters in the book was Quasi the tortoise, a hybrid between a tortoise and a calf. The Red Queen was talking about a quasi-turtle soup that looked very much like a cheap version of the turtle soup popular in Victorian era. The poor could not afford such a luxury, so they cooked soup from beef hooves and heads.

No drugs here

The fact that Alice drinks a potion (after which the space around her changes), eats mushrooms, talks to plants and animals, often hears rubbish, led to an erroneous interpretation. Some readers have decided that we are talking about drugs like LSD. Of course, Carroll meant nothing of the sort, because Alice is a little girl!

It turns out that all these hallucinations with a changed space, an increase or decrease in objects, were experienced by the writer himself, who suffers from a rare neurological disorder. The disease was first discovered in 1955 by the English psychiatrist John Todd. The Doctor called it "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome".

The Chinese authorities were against

As for talking with animals, because of this, Carroll's fairy tales were banned in China in 1931. The local government considered that it was not worthwhile to put man and animal on the same level.

zero to five

And the last interesting fact about Alice in Wonderland. In 1890, its author published an abridged version of the book for kids "from zero to five" with colorful illustrations the same John Tenniel.

On August 2, 1865, Macmillan published the first edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

SmartNews decided to choose the 5 most interesting facts associated with this famous fairy tale.

hatter

There is a character in the tale called the Hatter or the Mad Hatter. The name Mad Hatter owes its origin to the English proverb "mad as a hatter". The appearance of such a proverb is due to the fact that in the 19th century, craftsmen who made hats often suffered from excitability, impaired speech, and trembling hands. The health disorder of the hatters was caused by chronic mercury poisoning. A solution of mercury was used to process hat felt. As you know, toxic mercury vapor affects the central nervous system.

Cheshire Cat

The Cheshire Cat was not in the original version of the tale. This character was added to the tale in 1865. Mysterious smile Cheshire cat some attribute it to the then-popular saying "smiles like a Cheshire cat". Some researchers believe that the famous Cheshire cheese was given the appearance of a smiling cat. According to another version, Carroll was inspired to come up with this character by a sandstone cat figure, which was installed near the church of St. Wilfrid in the village of Grappenhall.

Dormouse Mouse

The character of the Dormouse Mouse in the book "Alice in Wonderland" was periodically in the teapot. This can be explained by the fact that children at that time kept dormouse as pets in teapots. The kettles were filled with grass and hay.

Turtle Quasi

The Quasi Turtle character in Lewis Carroll's book often cries. This is due to the fact that sea turtles often have tears. They help turtles remove salt from the body.

Over the past 20 years that Tim Burton and his "muse" - Johnny Depp have worked together, they have proven that their fruitful duo can show decent results. The gothic beauty of "Edward Scissorhands", the campy farce of "Sleepy Hollow", the mind-blowing insanity of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", each of their joint creations was unforgettable for the viewer.

So fans are eagerly waiting for the result of their latest collaboration - Alice in Wonderland, where Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter who meets Alice (Mia Wasikowska).
Let's go behind the scenes to find out that Tim Burton doesn't like motion capture technology, Mia Wasikowska hates green walls, and that creating an animated cat is much more difficult than you might imagine...

Fact 1. This film is not like the previous adaptations of the famous story.
Because, frankly, Tim Burton wasn't impressed with them. “All the versions of Alice that I saw suffered from a lack of dynamics,” says Tim. “They were all absurd stories, showing one phantasmagoric character after another. You look at them and think, “Oh, this looks unusual. Hmm, how strange ... ”and you don’t even pay attention to the development of the plot.
How does Tim Burton plan to avoid all these pitfalls? “We tried to make all the characters more solid and make the story more down to earth, simpler,” explains the director.
“I mean, they are still insane, but we gave each character their own specific insanity and a lot more depth.”

Fact 2. All special effects were obtained by trial and error.

Or, as Burton likes to say, "it was an organic process."
In fact, the special effects team filmed all the scenes using expensive Zemekis image capture equipment to discard the footage.
“In the scene with the Jack of Hearts (Crispin Glover pictured) and the tweedles, we used motion capture,” says lead animator David Schaub. “Knave in the story is 2.5 meters tall, so we thought motion capture would be the best way in this case. But in order for the tweedles' eyes to be directed correctly, we had to put the actor on stilts. As a result, all captured images depicted the actor on stilts. It looked ridiculous. ”
“Were you sorry to throw away the footage?”
“It was Tim's choice, he acted from his own experience and what he saw and the technique he used,” answers David Schaub.
“We discussed all the things we like and don't like about image capture technology. I had some heated discussions with the animation team, but personally I think this technology looks weird,” says Tim Burton.

Fact 3. You will not understand what is real and what is not.

“There are only three live actors in the film: Alice (Wasikowska), the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and the white queen (Anne Hathaway). Tweedles and Jack of Hearts are real heads mounted on animated bodies, it looks very unusual, you have not seen anything like it. This is very cool.
At the same time, the red queen is a combination of several various methods, which we eventually distorted somewhat.
But one of the most challenging tasks- was the creation of the Cheshire Cat. The difficulty was that he flies. And we thought, if cats could fly, how would they do it?
Then he always shows his huge smile, which causes problems, since he must have emotions. But how to convey other emotions, except for happiness, if he is constantly smiling? It was complicated.
As for the wonderland itself, it is completely modeled on a computer. Except, perhaps, for one scenery - this is the staircase that Alice descends after falling into the rabbit hole.
The result certainly looks amazing, but try to understand poor Mia Wasikowski.
“It was three months before the green screen,” sighs the actress. “I had to keep in mind that there would be an animated character in front of me. But this is very difficult to do when you have only tennis balls and duct tape in front of you.”

Fact 4. The Mad Hatter is a Depp/Burton creation.

“It’s funny,” says costume designer Colleen Atwood, who has worked with Tim Burton for 20 years, “but when the three of us made sketches of what we thought the Mad Hatter should look like and compared them to each other, they looked very similar” .
“One of the very interesting features Hatter's costume is that he is able to change his color, depending on the mood of the owner.”
“I made a lot of sketches of costumes, different colors and shades, and then it was all enhanced with computer graphics. It will look very cool.”

Fact 5. Mia Wasikowska is the new Cate Blanchett.

“She is just a delightful young lady,” says Colleen Atwood, “she has no head in the clouds, is extremely hardworking and has a great sense of humor, which is a must when making such a crazy film.”
“She reminds me a lot of Cate Blanchett in the sense that they are both very talented and easy to talk to. And they are both from Australia.”
“Mia has a very mature soul, but there are elements about her that make her feel very young and naive,” agrees Tim Burton. “She is perfect for the role of Alice, as she plays herself. She, too, is at a crossroads in her career right now, and this movie will probably be the weirdest movie she's ever made. It is very unusual even for me.”

translation (c) Ptah

Greg Hildenbrandt © kinopoisk.ru

Today, July 4 , book lovers around the world celebrate the birthday of the legendary adventure story "Alice in Wonderland". On this day more than 150 years ago, the British publishing house "Macmillan" printed and presented the first edition of legendary book Lewis Carroll. This fairy tale became a real legend, a favorite book of millions of readers. We invite you to learn interesting facts about your favorite book, as well as remember catchphrases.

Lewis Carroll © vk.com

A fairy tale about the travels of the girl Alice in wonderful country miracles were written by the English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. In 1862, during a picnic, Charles began to tell an invented fairy tale to Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of the faculty at Christ Church College, Oxford, where Carroll taught mathematics. A ten-year-old girl was so carried away by a fairy tale that she began to persuade the narrator to write down this story. Dodgson followed the advice and, under the name of Lewis Carroll, wrote the book "Alice in Wonderland", which appeared exactly three years after the fateful picnic. She was destined to become one of the most popular books of all time, which for many years has been fascinated by both adults and children.

Alice in Wonderland has been translated into 125 languages. But the translators had to work hard on the text. The fact is that if you translate the fairy tale literally, then all the humor and all the charm created by the author disappears. AT original version a lot of puns and one-liners based on features of English language.

Alice in Wonderland has been filmed 40 times including animated versions. The first film adaptation was made in 1903. Just a few years after Carroll's death, directors Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stowe made a 12-minute film based on the story. At that time - the beginning of the century - it was the longest film made in the UK.

It is interesting that in the first version of the tale there were no such bright characters as the Hatter and the Cheshire Cat.

In one of the most popular translations The Hatter was called the Hatter. All this because in English "hatter" meant not only "hatter". This word was called people who do everything wrong. The English even have a saying: "Mad as a hatter" ("mad as a hatter").

There are more than a million paintings created by artists from all over the world, which depict episodes from the legendary fairy tale. Salvador Dali painted 13 watercolors for different situations from book.

The poem "Jarmaglot", which is included in the fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland", consists almost entirely of non-existent words. However, these words obey the laws of English - and are very similar to real ones.

Top 10 best quotes from Alice in Wonderland:

1. You know, one of the most serious losses in a battle is the loss of a head.
2. Tomorrow is never today! Is it possible to wake up in the morning and say: "Well, now, finally, tomorrow"?
3. The best way to explain is to do it yourself.
4. If everyone did their own thing, the Earth would spin faster.
5. From mustard - they are upset, from onions - they are disingenuous, from wine - they are guilty, and from baking - they become kinder. What a pity that no one knows about this ... Everything would be so simple. Eat a muffin - and dobrel!
6. The more you learn right away, the less you suffer later.
7. You're beautiful. Only a smile is missing.
8. Do not be sad. Sooner or later everything will become clear, everything will fall into place and line up in a single beautiful scheme, like lace. It will become clear why everything was needed, because everything will be right.
9. I saw cats without smiles, but a smile without a cat ...
10. Alice was surprised how she was not surprised, but the amazing day had just begun and there was nothing surprising in the fact that she had not yet begun to be surprised.