Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - an audio guide

In this Oxford World’s Classics audio guide, Peter Hunt, Professor Emeritus in Children’s Literature at the University of Cardiff, who was responsible for setting up the first course in children’s literature in the UK, introduces the newcomer to critically reading texts written for children.

Click on the links below to hear Peter’s thoughts on the field and then explore Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in more detail.

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Peter Hunt introduces Lewis Carroll

Is it possible to say what these books are actually about?

Introducing Children's Literature

• Is it possible to say when children’s literature as a recognizable genre started? [0:30]



• “All children’s books, even now, are didactic in some way.”
  
  Peter Hunt explains why. [0:56]



• When, where and why did the academic study of children’s books begin? [1:13]
  
  
• When Peter Hunt set up the first children’s literature course in the UK, what was his intention? [0:58]



• What advice does Peter Hunt have for someone embarking on the study of children’s literature for the first time?
  
  Do you have to learn to read in a different way?[1:35]



• When studying children’s books, is it important to remember that they are often first encountered by being read aloud by an adult?[1:02]



• Peter Hunt reflects on the fact that the classics of children’s literature have been extraordinarily productive of other texts, sequels, prequels, adaptations as well as films. [0:41]



• When children’s books first appeared on university courses, they were regarded as non-canonical texts. Has that changed in the past forty years?
  
  Is there now a canon of children’s literature? [1:16]
  
  
• Biographical and psychological criticism seems to be particularly popular in discussing children’s texts. Peter Hunt discusses this. [1:24]



• Are children’s books able to address an adult and a child audience simultaneously, thereby becoming vehicles for satire and social comment?[1:26]



• When did a market for children’s books develop?
  
  Was that an early nineteenth-century phenomenon?[1:23]

About Alice

• Why have the Alice books proved to be such influential texts in the history of literature? [3:32]



• The Alice books can be seen as engaged in a sort of dialogue with another Victorian writer of children’s book, Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies.
  
  Peter Hunt explains Carroll’s riposte to Kingsley.[1:16]



• “Alice encounters a series of pathological maniacs.”
  
  Peter Hunt on the dark side of Wonderland. [1:36]



• How much of the Alice books’ staying power is a result of their linguistic inventiveness? [1:26]