The Poem of The Wasp

The wasp recited this poem to Alice and that is why this chapter was omitted from Through The Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
It would be easy to believe that what couldn't be published in the book had something to do with sexual references but that was not the case.
Illustrator John Tenniel told Lewis Carroll that "a wasp in a wig is beyond the appliances of art." Tenniel would not have illustrated the book if this chapter were included. Therefore, the wasp had to go!

The missing chapter did not surface until more than a century after the original publication of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. The chapter was reproduced–from the author's galley proofs–in a the December, 1979 edition of the Smithsonian magazine.



The pencils markings on the poem were made by Lewis Carroll in 1870.