The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

LEWIS CARROLL, JOHN GARDNER (EDITOR)

ISBN 10: 0393048470 / ISBN 13: 9780393048476

Published by W. W. Norton & Company October 1999, 1999

About this Item

Back of dustjacket wavy from damp. Seller Inventory # 351690

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company October 1999

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Oversized Hardcover

Illustrator: John Tenniel

Condition: Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis:

HardCover Pub Date: 2000 Pages: 384 in Publisher: WW Norton & Co. For over half a century. Martin Gardner has established himself as one of the world's leading authorities on Lewis Carroll His Annotated Alice. first published in. 1960 . has over half a million copies in print around the world and is highly sought after by families and scholars alike-for it was Gardner who first decoded the wordplay and the many mathematical riddles that lie embedded in Carroll's two classic stories: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Forty years after this groundeaking publication. Norton is proud to publish the Definitive Edition of The Annotated Alice. a work that combines the notes of Gardner's 1960 edition with his 1990 update. More Annotated Alice. as well as additional new discoveries and updates drawn from Gardner's encyclopedic knowledge of the texts. Ill...

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)