Alice the Child-Imperialist and the Games of Wonderland

67j8E W would dispute the claim that Lewis Carroll was fascinated by games and puzzles. His interest in logical and mathematical games has been well documented. Moreover, although he seems rarely to have turned his attention to politics, on at least one occasion when he did-at the time of the Parliamentary debate over the Second Irish Home Rule Bill-he took a characteristic delight in reducing this heated political debate to a puzzle. In fact, his "Home-Rule Mystery" was just one of many Home-Rule puzzles and games introduced to the English market in the months following Gladstone's introduction of the Bill in February of 1893.' A man who could construct a parlor game out of an emotional political issue must, one imagines, have had an extraordinarily detached outlook on politics. Yet one need not be overly surprised that Carroll could find the imaginative material for a puzzle in the debate over Ireland's place in the Empire. Indeed, a close look at his earlier classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, reveals a fascination on his part with the imaginative possibilities latent in a "confrontation of cultures"-the kind of encounter that