Alice's Adventures Under Ground (udgave 1866)

A young girl named Alice falls asleep in her older sister's lap as they are sitting outside on a summer day. In her dreams, she follows awhite rabbit in a waistcoat to an underground adventure, where she meets many anthromorphic animals, who she repeatedly insults out of thoughtlessness, and a playful puppy; changes size and shapes several times, making her wonder about her own identity; and engages with playing cards ruled by the belligerent Queen of Hearts. The adventure is full of nursery rhymes and songs, which are described as if they would have been nearly familiar to the original audiences (his niece, his friends, hospitalized children, then patrons). The story ends with the sister's dreaming of the moment that Carrol and his niece were reportedly in when he first told the story.

The copy I have of "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" includes a post-script and letter from Carroll that go into a possibly well meaning rambles about children's purity and God's love for the scared children who are dying. Unfortunately, Carroll sounded oblivious to the ordeals of the children he was writing to. He was also rather rude to his friends by describing their support of him as almost worthless compared to the adoration he gets from others for doing what his friends suggest. The nonfiction is stranger and more disturbing than the fiction. ( )

Cute, mildly interesting - more for its history than for the story. It's not quite all of Alice in Wonderland (which is apparently almost twice as long), but all the events are in that story, though not necessarily in the same order. It's missing some major bits - the Cheshire Cat and the whole Mad Tea Party, for one. The drawings are nice - he may not have thought of himself as good at sketching, but his people look like people both in profile and in full-face, which is more than I can say for a lot of people sketching today (including me). They look like just ink drawings, though I suspect he either pasted them in after he got a good version or copied them from a good version. Other than the sketches, and I suppose the handwriting, there's not much that stands out about the book. The foreword and intro, by Alice's granddaughter and...an editor of the facsimile edition? Russell Ash, not sure - are interesting too, two takes on the history of this manuscript. Glad I read it, I see no need to read it again. ( )

facsimile of the original manuscript, including his sketches, plus some historical notes.

This is what is typically known as an ur-text, namely a rough draft that has been extensively rewritten to produce the final work (though when I think of an ur-text, I usually think of the ancient world). Needless to say it is nowhere near as good as the original text, though for some reason people wanted Lewis Carol (or whatever his name is, and I can't be bothered looking it up at the moment) to publish the original story that he told Alice Liddel that day they were rowing down that river in Oxford (I know the river because I have been to Oxford, but I cannot remember the name of it – I think it is the Thames, but I could be completely and utterly wrong – and probably am).
I am not a big fan of ur-texts, unless of course a friend hands me one to read because they want to publish it (and so far I have only one friend who has actually published something, though he got me to critique the first book, but not the rest). The only ur-texts that I am actually interested in are the ancient ones, such as the ones that you find in ancient Babylon. For instance there are lots of different versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, though there is one that is generally accepted as the authentic version. Then there are also theories of the ur-text to the Bible, but the thing is that we don't actually have them so any possible texts that arose is mere speculation.
However, when it comes to books like the Bible, the ur-text might actually be substantially bigger than the final proof that we have, and the reason for that is that the editors (Moses when it comes to the first five books) has only brought out the important points that they want to get across. However, I am now thinking that the original texts are not necessarily ur-texts but rather source documents.
As for modern literature, ur-texts can be useful for those who are extensively studying the particular text because it helps us understand how the polished version has come together. However, it can also be useful to aspiring writers in that they can see the rough draft that came before the final product. However some writers don't actually use ur-texts, such as Isaac Asimov, who didn't actually like to plan or rewrite any of his stories. In fact, the one story that he said he put a lot of effort into developing turned out to be really bad. In the end, as I say, each to their own. ( )

I am so glad that I found this before reading the expanded story. ( )