Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Book

In the book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Hatter explains that he has annoyed Time, who he describes as a 'him' rather than an 'it'. He says that if you stay on good terms with him, he'll do whatever you like with the clock, such as arranging things so that, at the moment you had to go to school, he could make it so it's the afternoon and already time for lunch.

He goes on to explain that he was singing a song at a concert given for the Queen of Hearts when she cried out, "He's murdering the time!" This upset Time, who will no longer do anything the Hatter asks and has arranged things so that it is always six o'clock (and therefore always tea time.)

Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'

`If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM...Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!...We quarrelled last March...it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at!"...Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Hatter, `when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"'

`How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice.

`And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, `he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.'

A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.

`Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: `it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.'

In the original book, Alice is described as having one friend, the Cheshire Cat:

`Who ARE you talking to?' said the King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity.

`It's a friend of mine--a Cheshire Cat,' said Alice: `allow me to introduce it.'

There is no reference in either of the Alice books to Alice having any real-world friends. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice thinks about two children she knows who are the same age as she is, but she doesn't seem to think of them in an especially friendly way. Their names are Ada and Mabel.

....she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.

`I'm sure I'm not Ada,' she said, `for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little!

Through the Looking Glass was written as the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. They are both by Lewis Carroll, Alice is the main character in both, and both are set in fantastic realms where the usual laws of physics do not apply.

The writing style is the same in both books, and both are full of puns, word play, poems, and nonsense.

The basic plot line is the same for both books, each starts with Alice entering another world by some unusual means and awakening at the end to discover that her adventure has only been a dream.

Similar themes run through both books; in Alice in Wonderland, Alice has an identity crisis when she fears she may have been swapped for somebody else, and in Through the Looking Glass she loses her identity all together when she forgets her name.

Each book features game equipment as characters; in Alice in Wonderland there are living playing cards, in Through the Looking Glass, chess pieces. Both books feature kings and queens as well as talking animals and fabulous creatures. And both feature the March Hare and the Hatter, although in the second book, the spelling of their names has been changed.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

After she leaves the mad tea party Alice discovers a tree with an door in it. She goes through the door and finds herself back in the corridor of doors.

`At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!'

Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. `That's very curious!' she thought. `But everything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.' And in she went.

Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. `Now, I'll manage better this time,' she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocked) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and THEN--she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.

Jabberwocky uses a combination of made up nonsense words, ordinary English and old fashioned English.

The nonsense words are:

• Jabberwocky
• Brillig
• Slithy
• Toves
• Gyre
• Gimble
• Wabe
• Mimsy
• Borogoves
• Mome
• Raths
• Outgrabe
• Jabberwock
• Jubjub
• Frumious
• Bandersnatch
• Vorpal
• Manxome
• Tumtum
• Uffish
• Whiffling
• Tulgey
• Burbled
• Snicker-snack
• Galumphing
• Beamish
• Frabjous
• Callooh
• Callay
• Chortled

The old fashioned words Carroll used were to make the poem seem antiquated and are, twas, hast and thou.

'Nobody' is a joke character, who doesn't really exist, who is referred to in Chapter 7, The Lion and the Unicorn.

In the same episode, the word 'somebody' is used in its conventional sense to describe Haigha, the Anglo-Saxon messenger:

And I haven't sent the two Messengers, either. They're both gone to the town. Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see either of them.'

`I see nobody on the road,' said Alice.

`I only wish I had such eyes,' the King remarked in a fretful tone. `To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!'

All this was lost on Alice, who was still looking intently along the road, shading her eyes with one hand. `I see somebody now!' she exclaimed at last. `But he's coming very slowly -- and what curious attitudes he goes into!' (For the messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came along, with his great hands spread out like fans on each side.)

`Not at all,' said the King. `He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger -- and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he's happy. His name ia Haigha.' (He pronounced it so as to rhyme with `mayor.'

`Who did you pass on the road?' the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay.

`Nobody,' said the Messenger.

`Quite right,' said the King: `this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you.

`I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sulky tone. `I'm sure nobody walks much faster than I do!'

`He can't do that,' said the King, `or else he'd have been here first.

The earliest documented use of the phrase "mad as a hatter" appears in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, January-June 1829. It appears in a section of the magazine headed Noctes Ambrocianæ. No. XL1V:

TICKLER (aside to SHEPHERD.): He's raving.

SHEPHERD (to TICKLER.): Dementit.

ODOHERTY (to both.): Mad as a hatter. Hand me a segar.

So the term is at least one hundred and eighty years old.

It is believed to have come about because hatters in the eighteenth and nineteenth century frequently suffered from mercury poisoning. Mercury is a chemical which used to be used in the production of felt hats. It is extremely toxic and can cause symptoms which appear to be similar to 'madness'.

Hatters in Danbury, Conneticut, USA are known to have suffered the ill effects of mercury poisoning, the symptoms of which were known locally as "the Danbury shakes." It is also claimed that the Danbury hatmakers were known as "the mad hatters," but evidence is unavailable as to whether this predates the appearance of the phrase in Blackwood's.

Apparently in New Zealand the name "hatter" was given to miners /prospectors who work alone. It was thought that they frequently went mad from the solitude of their claim away in the bush although it is more likely that they were named "hatters" after the phrase, rather than the phrase being named after them.

There also is a theory that the phrase is a corruption of the term 'as mad as an adder', which is roughly equivalent to 'as angry as a rattle-snake'.

The phrase has of course been immortalised by the Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, who was named "the Mad Hatter" in Disney's 1951 adaptation.