Lewis Carroll Books in Order

Lewis Carroll wrote two Alice books and then spent the rest of his life being asked for a third - a request he answered with a nonsense poem about hunting a creature nobody can describe, two enormous odd novels called Sylvie and Bruno, and a shelf of mathematical logic. The order question is really: the two Alice books, in order, and then how far down the rest of the rabbit hole to go. The answer this page gives: the Snark is worth anyone's twenty minutes; Sylvie and Bruno is for the completist; the puzzle and logic books are for the curious (1865–1893).

Where to start

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), then Through the Looking-Glass (1871). The two are a pair; the first is the door.

Does the reading order matter?

The Alice pair, strict: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) before Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) - the second assumes the first, half its jokes are chess-structured, and the tone darkens deliberately. There is no third Alice book; the closest thing is The Hunting of the Snark (1876), the nonsense poem in the same universe - the Bellman, the Boots, the Beaver - and the best twenty minutes on the shelf after Alice. Phantasmagoria (1869) is the light verse of the middle years. The completist lane: Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), the two-volume strange novel that mixes fairy tale, Victorian romance and moralizing, strict in order if attempted. The professional lane is the real Lewis Carroll - Charles Dodgson, Oxford mathematician: A Tangled Tale (1885) and Symbolic Logic (1896) are the puzzle books, genuinely playable. Nursery Alice (1890), his own retelling for younger children, is the one genuinely alternative entry

Which one is the best?

The two Alice books (1865, 1871); The Hunting of the Snark (1876); Nursery Alice (1890) for reading aloud to the youngest.

Covered in depth here

An 8-question quiz, reading time, club questions and verified quotes for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Related guides

Readers finishing this shelf usually want the map next door: Oscar Wilde books in order, Chronicles of Narnia books in order, Anne of Green Gables books in order. Every guide follows the same format — the shelf, the entry point, the honest answer about order.

Make it a project

Pick a session size and let the days accumulate — at the pace our reading speed test measures, most shelves above clear in a few weeks of half-hours. Every guide on the books in order shelf follows this same format, and when a book lands, its 8-question quiz is waiting on the original book quiz.