Æðelgyðe Ellendæda on Wundorlande: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Old English

Old English (or Englisc) is the English language as recorded from around the year 700 to 1100. Spoken by King Alfred the Great and Lady Godiva the Venerable Bede and Edward the Confessor it is the language of such classics as Beowulf The Dream of the Rood and The Seafarer. After 1100 the language went through a period of change so rapid that by the time two centuries had passed few could read these old texts. And yet Englisc really is English-much closer to the language of Chaucer Shakespeare Pope and Dickens and much easier for English speakers to learn than such modern languages as French Spanish and German. For those interested in learning the oldest variety of English this translation of Alices Adventures in Wonderland may provide a pleasurable study aid: just set the modern text and this one side by side and compare the two. But be careful! In this book Lewis Carrolls classic tale has been transported into the distant past before the English had ever heard of tea imagined a device as sophisticated as a watch or even seen a rabbit (a later invasive species). Instead they drank beer mead or (when they could get it) wine; an exceptionally learned scholar might have known how to tell time with an astrolabe; and the most familiar long-eared animal was the hare. These and many other differences between the England of Lewis Carroll and that of King Alfred are represented in this books text and illustrations both. In addition the magnificent poems of Alice (How Doth the Little Crocodile You Are Old Father William and more) have been rendered into the meter and idiom of Beowulf thus becoming satires of Old English heroic poetry as well as of the moralistic verse that Carroll lampooned with such devastating effect.