Introduction:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, or more colloquially Alice in Wonderland, is a book attributed to Lewis Carroll which was the pen name for Charles Dodgson. Queen Victoria’s Alice in Wonderland looks to challenge the authorship of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and attributes it to Queen Victoria as a cryptic autobiography. This book is a complete roller coaster in the best way and the evidence presented is decently compelling, though I would argue it isn’t definitive.
The book starts out with a standard introduction about the content to explain their methodology and the content. The introduction actually does contribute to the content unlike a lot of similar types of books. The book is further divided into an annotated copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, then a linguistic analysis of some specific bits, then an argument against the theory posited in the book, and another argument for it. The book makes a bit of a heavy ask and in the end very fairly deals with balancing the ask to the evidence.
Down the Rabbit Hole:
The main section of the book is basically two books side by side (though it is not a 1:1 correspondence). One part is just plain old Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the other is a first person imitation of Queen Victoria’s commentary on the symbolism and hidden pieces of her autobiography as embedded into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My one complaint with this methodology is that the commentary does not keep pace with the original. It goes from being too fast to too slow, not so much in the sense of content, but in terms of what it is commenting on. If you read certain sections, you need to flip several pages ahead in the commentary to keep pace with the original work, and for others, you need to slow down and read many pages ahead in the original to keep up with the commentary. The reference numbers also skip around a good bit so certain sections may require some rereading to keep track of what is applied where.
As for the actual sell itself of: “Is this Queen Victoria’s work and not Lewis Carroll’s?” When I started, I assumed this would be a pretty cut and dry case of reading way too far into coincidence for its own good type of work, but I was presently surprised when about midway through, I was already pretty okay with the premise. I wouldn’t say it was an easy, direct sale on the whole concept, but it definitely made a heavy impression. Some of the examples were very clearly reaches, while others were pretty straightforward, logical conclusions with minimal external details. The actual writing of the “Queen’s” section also fits in nicely for tone and writing style with the original. The two works feel like a work and its author’s commentary instead of two independent ideas which is a pleasant surprise.
Alice’s Evidence:
The evidence itself is where we get a bit murky. Some of it is top notch and really lends credence to the theory that this may be Queen Victoria’s cryptic autobiography, while some of it is so much a stretch that it basically makes you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I almost feel that reducing the analysis would actually lend more evidence to the theory than some of the exposition. One piece of evidence I feel epitomizes this conflict is a mention of the Dormouse, as a combination of the French “dormir” (“sleep”) and the Latin “amas” (“love”). I could get behind the evidence of how they derive this up until the point we run into the following section: The Latin word for love is transliterated from “amas” to the vulgarized, or “common,” pronunciation, “a mouse”; and then mocked by carrying it through its declensions as a noun. … By declining it as a noun-rather than conjugating it as a verb-I hint that I am refusing (“declining”) love because I am very young, and not ready for “conjugal” love. This sort of beating the dead horse actually winds up making the original evidence a little less believable even though originally I was willing to bite.
This last section would not have been that bad if it were not for it being sandwiched in with things like: The reason I arranged to have Bill the Lizard enter through the chimney is to parody the Santa Claus myth. This is further expounded on as Bill the Lizard is a metaphor for the Regency Bill because he is a lizard (there is a bit of exposition of how this is linked, but it boils down to something like “slippery as a snake” or whatever disparaging reptile quote of choice) named Bill. Some of the symbolism gets so thick it becomes so solid and opaque that whatever idea was originally supposed to be conveyed is lost in the noise of the heavy-handed wording. There are enough stretches at evidence like this that it actually works against some of the better evidence in the work.
If you note in the first paragraph, I mentioned that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was attributed to Lewis Carroll. I started this book near expecting it to be a complete joke and was presently surprised with the thoroughness of the evidence (despite the warts). The Duchess represents the Duchess of Kent, Victoria’s mother, which is two-faced and offensive in the beginning, but, as Victoria approaches the age of majority and the plan laid out begins to falter, tries to win her back. The ugliness that the duchess in the book is portrayed with is a physical manifestation of the Duchess of Kent’s personality. The Mad Hatter represents Conroy’s attempt and ambition to become King via subterfuge and his reaction to where his ambitions and attempt leads him. This sounds like a stretch, but in conjunction with other events and the other historical research, it begins to make sense in context of all the other evidence presented.
The commentary feels a bit like a high school or a lower level undergraduate English or literature class in that it tries to look for meaning a bit too deeply at times. There is already a nicely established theme and a good corpus of evidence, but I feel like it continues to dig. We already hit our “X marks the spot”, we can stop now, but we kept on going for better and for worse. If some of the symbolic stretches could be reeled in a bit, the leap of faith to believe the assertions made would be much easier coasting on just the strength of the better evidence in the book.
A Mad Tea-Party
If we throw out the best and the worst evidence, we are left with an interesting case, but one without much harrumph. If we take the mean of the evidence, we basically break even at best. The best evidence makes the book work. If we just take the better evidence and some of the other bits in between, we get a great sales pitch but a much shorter work. It really leaves me a bit conflicted as there is some great evidence in favor of the book’s base argument, but some of the lesser bits of evidence actually drag the entire effort down. Omission would actually help the case considerably.
Even though omission would help, it still wouldn’t set us up for a grand slam by any stretch, which is why I feel they continued to elaborate as much as they did. They set up a hard sell and dug themselves into a ditch trying to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt when they could have stopped at “prove it enough to be believable”. This hard sales tactic is like a classic used car salesman in subtlety and efficiency; I’ll typically throw the baby out with the bathwater if it’s what it takes to get away. Fortunately, the book is able to restrain from its sales pitch long enough to still succeed sometimes. The ebbing and flowing of evidence leaves enough time to believe it enough to throw out the worst evidence which is what makes this book really work. Had I not been beaten over the head with enough somewhat believable evidence and just plain good evidence, I may have given up when I hit some of the much harder sells.
Who Stole the Tarts?
When I started reading this book, I thought the entire concept was a stretch of a stretch of a stretch. The evidence presented within is thorough and rigorous, to the point of being a flaw, and really pushes enough points to make the theory believable before the end section. Some of the symbolism is heavy handed and feels like a bit of a stretch (and even gets more stretched) when reading, but overall the book definitely manages to push the theory as something which can’t instantly be ruled out which is more than most pseudo-conspiracy theory type works.
The end section basically covers a word analysis (with many stipulations) and some other external evidence. The word analysis focuses on italicization of various words. The evidence is somewhat convincing though there is obviously much to be desired from a single linguistic analysis. The remainder is dedicated to presenting why it couldn’t be Charles Dodgson and a smidgen of why it may be him. Ultimately, the only evidence presented in favor is that he is the listed author via his pseudonym. There’s more evidence against Lewis Carroll in this section which ultimately ties together all the previous evidence. There are a couple samples of Queen Victoria’s writing style compared with some choice selections, and then there are some random tidbits of Lewis Carroll’s writing style outside of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I had previously read some of Lewis Carroll’s works before, but nothing but the Alice series interested me in all. I thought of him as a one-hit wonder at best, or someone who may have plagiarized at worst.
Conclusion:
I started reading this expecting to be disappointed and to see so many stretches that the whole concept would be laughable within a few chapters, but I ended up seeing an amazingly cogent theory which posits that Queen Victoria actually wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as some kind of cryptic autobiography. The timing and some of the other evidence really lends credence to this, but the actual exposition of the symbolism really helps to sell and cement this concept as more than coincidence and a series of misfortunes. I’m going to have to order the sequel soon.
If you’re a fan of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland this is a great book to have on your shelf. It also includes some cool information about some published variants of the work and when certain things were added or altered between editions and when. You may not believe it at all, but it is an interesting concept and there is some great evidence for the case they present. Check it out if you get a chance, it’s definitely worth the read.
Get it here.