Alice's Adv.in Wond &Looking G (Bantam Classics) - Softcover

Carroll, Lewis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553213458 ISBN 13: 9780553213454

Publisher: Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc, 1920

Synopsis

'Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'. So many readers were to take the advice of the King of Hearts that by the end of the nineteenth century the double Alice (1865 and 1872) had acquired a pre-eminent and unassailable position in children's literature. Lewis Carroll's use of logic, by which the ordinary is translated into the extraordinary in an entirely plausible way, is delightfully combined with an exceptional knowledge and understanding of the mind of the child. Satire, allusion, and symbolism weave deeper and mysterious meanings, lending a measure of immortality to Carroll's remarkable fantasy.

About this title

Review:

Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is, for most children, pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new". There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle and the Mad Hatter, together with a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser", seemingly without moral or sense.

For more than 130 years, children have revelled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing and branches of Arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings, reproduced here, are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages)

Review:

"Only Lewis Carroll has shown us the world upside down as a child sees it, and has made us laugh as children laugh." --Virginia Woolf

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc
• Publication date: 1920
• ISBN 10: 0553213458
• ISBN 13: 9780553213454
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 272