The book Alice in Wonderland failed to be named in an 1888 poll of the publishing season's most popular children's stories.
Generally it received poor reviews, with reviewers giving more credit to Tenniel's illustrations than to Carroll's story.
At the release of Through the Looking-Glass, the first Alice tale gained in popularity and by the end of the 19th century Sir Walter Besant wrote that Alice in Wonderland "was a book of that extremely rare kind which will belong to all the generations to come until the language becomes obsolete".

In 2014, Robert McCrum named the tale "one of the best loved in the English canon", and called it "perhaps the greatest, possibly most influential, and certainly the most world-famous Victorian English fiction".
The book Alice in Wonderland failed to be named in an 1888 poll of the publishing season's most popular children's stories. Generally it received poor reviews, with reviewers giving more credit to Tenniel's illustrations than to Carroll's story. At the release of Through the Looking-Glass, the first Alice tale gained in popularity and by the end of the 19th century Sir Walter Besant wrote that Alice in Wonderland "was a book of that extremely rare kind which will belong to all the generations to come until the language becomes obsolete".
In 2014, Robert McCrum named the tale "one of the best loved in the English canon", and called it "perhaps the greatest, possibly most influential, and certainly the most world-famous Victorian English fiction".
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland