The sculpture stands on the northern edge of Conservatory Water, the small lake in Central Park where children and adults can still be seen today steering miniature sailboats. There, in 1959, the Spanish sculptor José de Creeft installed the bronze group inspired by "Alice in Wonderland", a gift from the editor George Delacorte, owner of a house of popular magazines, who commissioned it in memory of his wife, Margarita, and wanted it from the outset as a plaything, made to be climbed and touched by children.

The decades of small hands climbing up the bronze have left on the most handled parts a polished shine that no planned patina could achieve, while around it, engraved in the granite, run verses of the "Jabberwocky", considered one of the most celebrated nonsense poems in the English language. Written by Lewis Carroll, pen name of the Englishman Charles Dodgson, author of Alice herself, the poem is made almost entirely of invented words and appears, within the character's adventures, printed in reverse, so that she can decipher it only when it is reflected in the mirror. Carved into the stone is the opening stanza, which begins with "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves".