Abstract illustration of the silhouettte of Alice falling, a white rabbit, and a red mushroom

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

by Lewis Carroll

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"Much Of A Muchness"

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Context: The lasting fame of the Oxford lecturer in mathematics, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, rests with his imaginative stories for children, centering around a young friend, Alice Liddell, and written under the pen name, Lewis Carroll. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice becomes bored while her sister reads a book and runs after a White Rabbit, tripping and falling a great distance down into the rabbit hole. When she stops falling, Alice finds herself in a queer land in which many strange things happen. She attends a tea with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and a sleepy Dormouse, at which the Dormouse tells a disjointed tale about three little sisters who live at the bottom of a well and draw treacle from it. The Dormouse, becoming sleepy, abruptly changes the thought and has the sisters drawing pictures of "all manner of things":

The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: "–that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness–you know you say things are 'much of a muchness'–did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness!"

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