How Lewis Carroll's most famous creation inspired the Absolootly Mad slot

The release of the Absolootly Mad Mega Moolah slot a few weeks back not only signalled another slot game added to the increasingly large Mega Moolah progressive jackpot network, but it was also the latest example of how a famous story, written by one of the UK's greatest ever writers, has inspired another form of entertainment.

That famous story is Alice in Wonderland, or as it should properly be known, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the genius behind this story was the enigmatic and inspirational Lewis Carroll.

Before we take a look at how his most famous children's story has been the inspiration for so many different forms of entertainment, let's learn a little more about the author who created this rich and sometimes disturbing world for Alice, and children, to explore.

Who was Lewis Carroll?

Born in January 1832, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson came from a family of Anglicans that were based in Daresbury Cheshire. The Church at which they preached now has stained glass windows depicting characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Charles showed great aptitude as a child at Rugby School and as an adult, he studied, lived and worked as a scholar and teacher at Christ Church at Oxford University. A talented author, Dodgson was also a gifted illustrator, poet, photographer, mathematician, teacher and inventor.

It was while teaching at Oxford he began writing and used the pen name Lewis Carroll. Here he wrote his masterworks which included

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass
• His comeback story, Sylvie and Bruno, which was penned 30 years after his Alice stories.
• Nonsense poem's The Hunting of the Snark and Jabberwocky

Carroll also penned two important mathematics papers both entitled Curiosa Mathematica, the first of which looked at a New Theory of Parallels, and the other Pillow Problems and he also authored a paper on The Principles of Parliamentary Representation.

Less well known facts about Lewis Carroll are that he devised an early version of a number of word games, one of which would eventually become the popular game Scrabble, as well as popularising another word game, where you change one letter of a word to try and change it to another word. For example by changing Hat to Box in the following way.

• Hat
• Hot
• Pot
• Pox
• Box

However, it is for his poetry and his two Alice stories that Lewis Carroll is most celebrated and there have been numerous examples of how his stories have inspired many forms of entertainment over the years.

Alice in film and TV

The Alice story has been told in many different forms over the years, the first being a British silent film which used the term Alice in Wonderland in 1903. Since then, a number of films and TV shows have been adapted over the years in both the UK and the United States. Popular belief is that the Disney cartoon of 1951 was one of the first portrayals of the story, but in actual fact there had been 13 different Film, TV and theatrical adaptations up until this point.

Considered one of Disney's classic films of the 50s and 60s, Alice in Wonderland caught the imagination of a generation and its look and style have influenced other adaptations since, the most famous of which being Tim Burton's 2010 film.

However, since then Alice in Wonderland's story has appeared in many different forms on stage, screen and even in a ballet. There have been TV movies, musicals and even an erotic musical comedy film (released in 1976). Adaptations of the story have been made in Scandinavia, Japan, Australia and France in addition to the UK and US.

Tim Burton's 2010 film is arguably the most famous of the modern-day adaptations, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas and Mia Wasikowska in the titular role. It adapted Lewis Carroll's original story to tell a story of a resistance led by Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter inspired character, Tarrant Hightopp, against the crazy queen of Wonderland, Iracebeth, who is a combination of the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen from Carroll's original story.

It is worth noting that in many of these adaptations, elements of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass are used extensively in many, rather than just a single text.

Alice in music

The Alice in Wonderland story, and its disparate elements and characters, have also been the inspiration for a number of top songs over the years. Perhaps one of the easiest to recognise is the 1967 hit White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane which includes lyrics such as

"One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small and the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all. Go Ask Alice when she's ten feet tall. And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall, Tell'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call."

Stevie Nicks also released a 1989 Album called The Other Side of the Mirror, a clear reference to Through the Looking Glass, which also contained the song Alice, which compares the singer to the main character in the story.

Aerosmith's 2001 album Sunshine and the titular song and video is directly about the Alice in Wonderland story and features single Steven Tyler as the Mad Hatter, as well as a number of other characters taken directly from the story.

More recently, Taylor Swift's album bonus track Wonderland also directly references the story with lyrics including "We fell down a rabbit hole" and "Didn't you calm my fears with a Cheshire Cat smile?"

Alice in Wonderland themes have also appeared in passing in many other songs including songs by Pete Doherty's band Babyshambles, Radiohead, Panic at the Disco & Fun, Natalia Kills and many more.

Alice in slots gaming

It may be tempting to think that Microgaming's recent release Absolootly Mad may be the first Alice in Wonderland slot to hit casinos, and while it may be the first progressive jackpot slot to be based on that theme, there are actually a number of other slot games that also have used the story as the central theme for the game.

Microgaming themselves have touched on the story previously with their June 2006 release Mad Hatters, other games from other providers include the Adventures in Wonderland slot, Alice in Wonderland, Wonderland, Alice's Wonderland Slot, Alice and the Mad Tea Party, Return to Wonderland, Alice and the Red Queen, Forest of Wonders, White Rabbit Megaways and many more.

As you can see, the Alice in Wonderland story continues to hold a great interest for us in many forms and the good news is that you don't have to be Absolootly Mad to follow Alice down the rabbit hole to see how much fun you could have thanks to this amazing and enduring story.