Analysing Lewis Carroll's Alice books in the context of children's literature from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, Ronald Reichertz argues that Carroll's striking originality was the result of a fusion of his narrative imagination and formal and thematic features from earlier children's literature. Drawing examples from a wide range of children's literature Reichertz demonstrates that the Alice books are infused with conventions of and allusions to earlier works and identifies precursors of Carroll's upside-down, looking-glass, and dream vision worlds. Key passages from related books are reprinted in the appendices, making available many hard-to-find examples of early children's literature.