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The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition
by: Lewis Carroll

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780393048476
ISBN: 0393048470
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 312
Publication Date: 1999-11
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Sales Rank: 5418
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company

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Editorial Review:

Book Description:
The culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, The Annotated Alice is a landmark event in the rich history of Lewis Carroll and cause to celebrate the remarkable career of Martin Gardner. 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 groundbreaking 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. Illustrated with John Tenniel's classic and beloved art--along with many recently discovered Tenniel pencil sketches--The Annotated Alice will be Gardner's most beautiful and enduring tribute to Carroll's masterpieces yet. Celebrating his eighty-fifth birthday in the fall of 1999, the redoubtable Gardner has been called by Douglas Hofstadter 'one of the great intellects produced in this country in this century.' With The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, we have this remarkable scholar's crowning achievement.

Amazon.com:
'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations!'

Readers who share Alice's taste in books will be more than satisfied with The Annotated Alice, a volume that includes not only pictures and conversations, but a thorough gloss on the text as well. There may be some, like G.K. Chesterton, who abhor the notion of putting Lewis Carroll's masterpiece under a microscope and analyzing it within an inch of its whimsical life. But as Martin Gardner points out in his introduction, so much of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is composed of private jokes and details of Victorian manners and mores that modern audiences are not likely to catch. Yes, Alice can be enjoyed on its own merits, but The Annotated Alice appeals to the nosy parker in all of us. Thus we learn, for example, that the source of the mouse's tale may have been Alfred Lord Tennyson who 'once told Carroll that he had dreamed a lengthy poem about fairies, which began with very long lines, then the lines got shorter and shorter until the poem ended with fifty or sixty lines of two syllables each.' And that, contrary to popular belief, the Mad Hatter character was not a parody of then Prime Minister Gladstone, but rather was based on an Oxford furniture dealer named Theophilus Carter.

Gardner's annotations run the gamut from the factual and historical to the speculative and are, in their own way, quite as fascinating as the text they refer to. Occasionally, he even comments on himself, as when he quotes a fellow annotator of Alice, James Kincaid: 'The historical context does not call for a gloss but the passage provides an opportunity to point out the ambivalence that may attend the central figure and her desire to grow up.' And then follows with a charming riposte: 'I thank Mr. Kincaid for supporting my own rambling.' There's a lot of information in the margins (indeed, the page is pretty evenly divided between Carroll's text and Gardner's), but the ramblings turn out to be well worth the time. So hand over your old copy of Lewis Carroll's classic to the kids--this Alice in Wonderland is intended entirely for adults. --Alix Wilber

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Alice In Wonderland - Special Book
I was truly pleasingly surprised when I received this book. It was much more than I expected for the price I paid. It is definitely a book I will pass down to my children.

Rating:

- a gift purchase
This was a gift so I didn't read it, but the recipients of the book were delighted with it. The cover was beautiful and would make an excellent coffee table book. The delivery was speedy.

Rating:

- Genius takes on genius
I grew up reading Martin Gardner in Scientific American, and although I didn't get interested in Lewis Carroll until I saw the original "Alice" manuscript in a display at the British Library, I've been a fan of children's stories all my life. Having Gardner expound Carroll is (dare I say it?) pure genius. I have a number of annotated works, but I think this is the only one where the notations come close to outweighing the actual text being explained. That goes to show not only how deep the rabbit hole goes, but how much deeper someone like Gardner can dig, and how many rewards can be granted by the author who invites his readers to dig deeper. As I've noted in my other reviews of these annotated works, this one is very attractive on the shelf, easy on the eyes, and thoroughly enjoyable. Pick this up and start throwing out expressions, like, "If you don't jabberwock, I'l smack you in the lobster quadrille!"

Rating:

- Beneath the Rabbit Hole
If you really want to go beyond the "children's story" side of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There", this is an excellent resource. With the help of the notes, the "nonsense" of this tale makes more sense. And you get all that along with reproductions of John Tenniel's fantastic illustrations, including a section in the back with his preparatory pencil sketches. Buy it, and smile like the Cheshire Cat.

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