Lewis Carroll Resources

Performing Arts

1947 program

Lewis Carroll-Inspired Performing Arts

While film and television didn’t yet exist in Carroll’s time, there were many theatrical and musical pieces inspired by his works during his lifetime.  In fact, he consulted on and wrote some special material for the first authorized major theatrical staging of Alice in Wonderland, presented to great acclaim by Henry Saville Clarke.  Since Carroll’s passing in 1898, interpretations and appreciations of his works, characters, and life have multiplied astronomically in all of the performing arts.  Carroll had a notable distaste for exaggeration, but in this case we’re not overstating. 

Below is a small but representative sampling of Carroll’s remarkably enduring influence on all facets of the performing arts.  Enjoy.

Please note: All links provided on this site are for reference only, and do not necessarily represent an endorsement of a given site or its contents.  If you know of additional links appropriate for this or any of our other pages, please send the link to us!  We are always looking for new, good-quality links relating to Lewis Carroll.

All Arts

Theatre

Ballet

Opera

Music

  • Gerald Fried: The Chess Game (Most recently, performed live at our Spring 2009 meeting, with Mr. Fried conducting and playing oboe!)
  • Mike Batt’s The Hunting of the Snark
  • The Beatles: I Am the Walrus (1967)
  • Irving Berlin: Alice in Wonderland (1916)
    (Used in Bud Pollard’s “Alice in Wonderland” film)
  • William Boyd: The Songs from Alice in Wonderland (1870), The Songs from Through the Looking-Glass (1872)
  • Lucy Broadwood: Songs from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
    (with gorgeous illustrations by George Folkard)
  • David del Tredici: An Alice Symphony, Final Alice, Child Alice, Heavy Metal Alice, and more
  • Edgar Stillman Kelley: Alice in Wonderland Suite for Piano (1918)
    (Played at Columbia University for Alice Liddell Hargreaves’ visit)
  • Markus Lang’s List Site of Carroll-Inspired Musical Compositions
Share