reading to much into it

Consult any set of notes on the book and you'll see a slew of themes picked out: puberty, abandonment, the challenge of transition to adulthood, even the perils of authoritarian justice in the form of the Queen of Hearts.

But bearing in mind the nature of the birth of the piece, an off-the-cuff attempt to amuse a child in a rowboat, are people guilty of reading too much into it?

Richard Jenkyns, professor of the classical tradition at Oxford University, called Alice in Wonderland "probably the most purely child-centred book ever written" and said that its only purpose "is to give pleasure".

Katherine rivers- daughter of carrols speal heraprist

I shall always remember his beautiful twinkling eyes, full of love and laughter, as he told us wonderful stories…. And how Lewis Carroll loved the country, the woods, and the hay, and wove into his magic stories the flowers and animals we saw there! Sitting with his back to a big tree-trunk, with one of us on his knee – sometimes one on each knee – he would tell us for hours, stories of the Pixies. And every time he came, he had fresh adventures to relate.

Based on his own experience as an illustrator for the 1988 edition of Alice in Wonderland, Anthony Browne believes Carroll might not have been aware of the meanings found within his story.

"People interpret books in a logical way as they do dreams. They want it to have meaning. Alice in Wonderland is not to be read as a logical book.  There could be some hidden meanings in there, especially considering Carroll was a mathematician during his lifetime, whether he was aware of such meanings subconsciously or not."

'mathematical' game of croquet,

very devoted to his seven sisters, and I remember how very sad and upset he was when, one day, a wire came for him, telling him of the illness of one of them. Father soon drove him to the station, four miles off; and after that we were sad, too, for, his sister dying the next day,

two points here: "Arithmetical Croquet" is played in the head – it's a mind-game – and, as you will have noted, none of Dodgson's sisters predeceased him! Once you come across inaccuracies, all the rest is suddenly suspect.