What does the “10/6” mean on the Mad Hatters hat from Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland?
We began by searching Yahoo! for “Alice in Wonderland.” We were rewarded with 2 categories and 20 sites about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (the complete title of the Lewis Carroll book). We suspected the site from Carnegie Mellon University might offer some scholarly insight, so off we headed. Once there, we found an image of The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party by an illustrator named Tenniel. In the picture, the piece of paper attached to the Mad Hatter’s top hat reads “In this style 10/6.” Looked like a price tag to us, but we wanted to be sure, so we continued on. We returned to Yahoo! and typed in “Tenniel,” which led us to the Sir John Tenniel category in the Yahoo! directory. We clicked around
