The first encounter: Observations on the chronology of encounter with some adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books

Abstract

The article argues for the necessity of taking into account not only the chronology of adaptation but also the chronology of encounter, using as a starting point an instance of an adaptation student who had seen the 1951 Disney film Alice in Wonderland as a child many times, long before her subsequent encounter with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It considers a selection of adaptations of Carroll’s work, including the 1950 Disney television promotion of its 1951 film and the 1966 Jonathan Miller’s BBC adaptation, to explore the probable consequences of different sequences of encounter.