The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (The Annotated Books)

I lost my 2 leather-bound volumes of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (AAW) and Through The Looking Glass (TLG) in one of my many moves over the years. I figured it was time for a replacement, and, for some strange reason, I wanted an annotated version -- to gain a better understanding of these magnificent works. This is -- according to all of the reviews that I read -- the best of the best. I have to admit that I agree with the other commentators on that point. I received the book a couple of weeks ago and just started reading it last week. I like the layout -- with the text and images and the annotations along side on the same page. The annotations are fascinating, and add a beautiful dimension to the works included. The book's physical qualities are exceptional -- the cover has an expensive and classic look about it, the illustrations and type are clear and crisp. All in all, a beautiful printing, fit for the beautiful works contained therein. The book is both a true labor of love and a work of art. I have, however, found a curiosity in the editing of the text of AAW -- misspellings of the contractions: to wit, won't is spelled w'on't (starting on page 20 of the Text and continuing for as far as I've read); Boo (on page 22, Note 2) is spelled Bo; can't is spelled ca'n't (starting on page 23 of the Text and continuing for as far as I've read). I find this to be a curious error -- and I am planning on contacting the publisher directly to see if they have corrected it; and, if so, I plan to ask for a corrected copy of the book. Aside from that -- I just love these stories. As always, the Disney versions left a lot to be desired (although I really liked the Tim Burton version with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, et al.). This is a beautiful version of some great works, and it has a high place on my list of favorite books. --Update 2013 March 31 -- I recently finished reading this book -- it made me realize just how much I loved these 2 stories. The added background annotations bring the entire experience to life -- giving me a sense of the evolution of the stories and the manner in which they were a part of the life of Lewis Carroll. I got a sense of the evolution and development of the stories, as well as the part they were in Carroll's own life. There is a magic here -- as in Peter Pan -- and it takes me back to a special time when I first read these stories as a younger man. They allow me to appreciate my own inner child, and cherish that part of my own life and that part of others as well. I've always been particularly drawn to childlike innocence -- whether in comedy such as Laurel and Hardy, or in these stories and Peter Pan (which has its dark elements, to be sure -- but there is still an innocence there, too). The original John Tenniel illustrations were also a special treat -- they were in the volumes I lost many years ago -- although I also have special appreciation for the Arthur Rackham illustrations for this story and Peter Pan (I also bought the Annotated Peter Pan and Huckleberry Finn of this Norton Series -- see my review there, too). You will be in for a special treat with this book and with others of this Annotated series by Norton. Give yourself a special treat and purchase this book -- and share it with someone you care about, too. P.S.: I originally gave a 4-star rating due to the editing errors (at least that's what I think they are -- the publisher never returned my inquiry about them) ---- but I am now upgrading it a 5-star rating after having read the book. It is utterly magnificent.

First, I will review the Alice books themselves. Then I will have a few words to say about the annotations in this edition. For some reason I put off reading the Alice books for many years. I do not know how, but I got it into my head that I would not really like them. I knew they were not traditional novels in the sense of having a "plot" or dramatic tension. I thought they might be kind of boring. I also thought that I had a basic idea of the story already from the animated Disney movie. I was essentially wrong on all counts. I was literally only a few pages into the first book when I realized that these are definitely works of genius. Not only are they highly entertaining (despite not having any traditional plot), but they are also extremely funny (which is extremely rare, even among 'humor' books). If that is all the books were they would definitely be worth reading, but there is much more to the Alice books. Anyone who has read the Alice books knows that there is a hidden depth to them, and that one can explore the books endlessly following different paths (logic, linguistics, psychology, literary criticism, Victorian culture, etc.) and never even come close to exhausting what these books have to offer. There is an essay in Lewis Carroll: A Celebration called "Toward a Definition of Alice's Genre" that was written by Nina Demurova. At the very end of the essay she quotes Louis Untermeyer, who apparently claimed in his introductions to the Alice books that they were "the most inexhaustible tale in the world" (86). Normally I do not like statements like that in literary criticism. I think literary criticism should be concerned with analyzing and clarifying the meaning of works, not with "ranking" works, which I think is mostly a useless exercise. In this case, however, I think the statement may actually be correct. I read the annotated version of Alice, I read all of Martin Gardner's annotations as I was reading, I read a number of essays on the books after finishing them, and I read a book called Language and Lewis Carroll by Robert Sutherland, and I genuinely feel like I have not even scratched the surface of these amazing novels. These books will provide the reader not only with entertainment, but enough food for thought, and material for research, to last a lifetime. I am sure I will be reading, and re-reading these works over and over for the rest of my life. I recommend that anyone who is thinking about reading these books get as early a start as possible, and not put it off like I did. I wanted to say just a few words about the annotations. For the most part I thought the annotations were excellent. The annotations in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland seemed to me to lean towards the biographical. I was ultimately less interested in the biographical details behind the creation of the Alice books (relating to both Dodgson himself, as well as Alice Liddell). I was more interested in some of the philosophical, logical, and linguistic aspects of the book, so I was slightly disappointed there was not more of a focus on those aspects of the work in the annotations to Alice in Wonderland. They were not entirely absent, for sure, and I felt the notes became more interesting in Through the Looking Glass. Despite my slight disappointment, however, I would definitely recommend that anyone thinking of reading this pick up the annotated versions. There is a lot in the books I would have missed without the annotations, and, of course, if you are someone who is interested in the biographical details behind the creation of the works, there is a fair amount of information in the notes. I would also recommend taking a look at the collection of essays on Lewis Carroll I referenced above, as well as the essays in the Norton Critical Edition of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. There are some very good essays in both collections that should be a good start for anyone wanting to go a bit deeper into these "inexhaustible tales". The book on language and Lewis Carroll by Robert Sutherland that I referenced above is also very good, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the linguistic insights contained within Carroll's Alice books, as well as some of his other works. And finally, the truly ambitious reader might be interested in taking a look at The Logic of Sense by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The book is a VERY technical work of philosophy, not for the faint of heart, and it is not directly about the Alice books, but Lewis Carroll is definitely one of the main "characters" in the book (to the degree that philosophy books have characters) and Gilles Deleuze offers some interesting interpretations of some passages from the Alice books.

Few books of any description are surrounded by the jungle of explication that has grown up around the Alice books of Lewis Carroll. There are several full-length biographies, annotated and critical editions of the stories, selections of Caroll's letters and diaries, tours of Carroll's Oxford, and by now innumerable essays on every conceivable aspect of Carroll (or Charles Dodgson) as don, mathematician, photographer, church deacon, linguist, logician, weirdo and prophet; and of the Alice books as children's lit, dream lit, satire, Victoriana, Zen koan, psychoanalytic palimpsest and nonpareil. And for all of that, some of it very good, some useful, much dull and disappointing, the Alice books--properly, ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE--retain not just their originality, their wit, and their power to amuse and bemuse, but their irreducible strangeness. No degree of familiarity--and over the years I've come to know them almost by heart--ever reduces the genuinely dreamlike comic irrationality; rather it becomes all the more potent and fascinating. In contrast with much twentieth-century Surrealism, with its violence, darkness and tiresome insistence on shocking the bourgeois, Carroll's strangeness was a natural self, released by the circumstance of telling stories to three little girls on a boat trip down the Isis. In the circus-mirror vision of that self, all polite Victorian culture--its Mandarin courtesy, compulsive moralizing, leaden-footed didactic verse, its coffinlike repression--was blown up, distorted and exploded with a combination of mathematical precision and bubble-busting glee. It will never happen--not precisely like this--ever again. No one has ever successfully imitated Carroll, and no one ever will. He happened only once, a kind of happy accident of nature, for which may we ever be thankful. If you want to tackle the now-vast literature of Alice--or just want to be able to catch some of the jokes now obscured by time--the best and obvious starting point is THE ANNOTATED ALICE, by Martin Gardner. The recent definitive edition (Norton, 1999,hardcover) combines the original edition with MORE ANNOTATED ALICE and includes the text of both stories with the suppressed "Wasp in the Wig" chapter, the Tenniel illustrations, and an amusing plethora of notes, and it's a splendid piece of work. Gardner also did an annotated edition of "The Hunting of the Snark," (Penguin, 1974) in which he again proved himself Carroll's perfect and inspired accompanist--as when, with Gardner's assistance, the Billiard-Maker wanders out of the poem and into one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Greek Interpreter"; it's a shame the whole thing isn't included in the ALICE. (If Carroll were French the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade would have him all sewn up in a single volume, including his serious mathematical works, a box of which so disconcerted Victoria when she asked to see "more of the works of Mr. Carroll." It wouldn't be fun, but it would be complete, and it would be annotated to the nines.) Robert Phillips edited a collection of critical essays, ASPECTS OF ALICE (Penguin, 1974), though the fun factor isn't all that high. One might've wished for something along the lines of Frederick Crews's great book THE POOH PERPLEX, in which "several Academicians of varying Critical Persuasions" approach the Bear of Little Brain, with splendid comic results. Morton N. Cohen's LEWIS CARROLL: A Biography (Knopf, 1995) is thorough, intelligent and copiously illustrated; Cohen also edited REFLECTIONS IN A LOOKING GLASS: A Centennial Celebration of Lewis Carroll, Photographer (Aperture, 1998), the best book I've seen on Carroll's photography. Glenn Shea, from Glenn's Book Notes, at www.bookbarnniantic.com

Beautiful book in great condition. Annotated edition for scholars of Alice or anyone writing a paper for university, etc.

Note 10 of THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS (the second Alice story in this book) makes the claim that the sheep only wears spectacles while knitting. "She does not have them on when she is in the boat with Alice". Well, I may be nearing 50 and short-sighted, but I'm pretty sure that John Tenniel's illustration on page 240 clearly shows spectacles on that sheep's face "when she is in the boat". See picture attached and please confirm I'm not going crazy. Who knows, maybe I DO need to visit my optometrist. Oh yeah, loved the annotations, loved the illustrations by many wonderful artists, 5/5 book.

This book is great, particularly if you are a fan of Alice in Wonderland. The book answers so many questions about the meaning behind a given bit in Alice, and how and why Dodgson/Carroll used a given reference. I became a fan of Alice in high school, and found this book to answer many questions--some I didn't even know I had until I found the answer in this book. The book is particularly helpful if you are writing a paper on Alice, as I was in Sophomore English. Read on, Mac Duff!

The Annotated Alice contains three works by Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, and The Wasp in a Wig. I will look at each of these in turn. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland As I just saw Disney's movie based off the book for the first time a couple weeks ago, it was very fresh in my memory. I must say, I was rather impressed by the movie's accurate portrayal of the book, for the most part (there was no Tweedle-Dee and Tweele-Dum, no flower garden, no going through the forest in the book, and the movie lacked the scene with the Duchess and with the Mock Turtle). Quite a few lines were direct quotations from the book, which is always appreciated. The book really is a nonsense book, though, which isn't favorite. I'm not sure what I expected, but I didn't expect it to be so close to the movie rendition! 3 stars Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found If possible, this work is even stranger and more nonsense filled than the last! In the first things were bizarre, but there was still a sense of normal-ness. Here, characters change into creatures and she's suddenly where she wasn't in the blink of an eye. This story is much more dream-like than the first. Through the Looking Glass does contain the scenes with the flower garden & with Tweedle-Dee and Tweele-Dum found in Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Still considered a classic work, but not my favorite cup of tea. 2.5 stars, rounded to 3 because of its cultural impact (it is here that famous poem Jabberwocky makes it's public appearance) The Wasp in a Wig This short episode was undiscovered for around 100 years after Lewis' death. Scholars knew it had, at one point, existed, but they knew nothing of it. It originally was a part of Through the Looking Glass, near the end of the book. These few pages were left out, it is believed, in part because it made a particular chapter too long. This is honestly probably my favorite scene from the book - and it didn't make the cut! I love the humanity of it and the lack of other weirdness most of the chapter exhibit. 5 stars The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition A good half of this book is sidebar notes on the texts of these works by Carroll. I readily admit I did not read all the notes - as this was my first time reading these works it was cumbersome to the story to forever be directing my attention away from the story itself. I did read some notes, though, and found them very interesting. It is no wonder that this is a bestseller on Amazon! These books are not ones that have made it to my re-read shelf, and I don't feel the need to have them in my personal library. That said, if I were to own them, it would be in this edition. What I read of the scholarly work is fantastic and interesting! I definitely think anyone who is familiar with these tales, interested in literature, or a fan of Carroll would love this definitive edition of his works. 5 stars Overall, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition averages 4 stars. This review appears at http://sophiesmindset.blogspot.com/2016/02/reading-challenge-2016-annotated-alice.html as a part of the Reading Challenge 2016.

As an unabashed fan of the Carroll's works, this book was worth it just for the large Tenniel illustrations. (Other editions, in my experience, make it difficult to appreciate the drawing details which tied in to the text.) The annotations, however, are simply spectacular. Gardner systemically explains not only Carroll's riddles and jokes, but provides context from the author's life and time period. Included are references to more in-depth resources; this facilitates investigating the mathematical and logical puzzles and, at least for me, the explanation of wordplay that has since fallen out of favor (yet becomes interesting again once explained) really enhanced the works. Changes made between editions of "Looking-Glass" and "Wonderland" provide an additional glimpse at Carroll's life and the editing process of the time. I had also been looking for his short story, "The Wasp in the Wig," and this book had it! The annotations may seem lengthy and at times tangential, but for me this added to the personal interpretation aspect -- it humanized both the original text and those who work on and enjoy it. Rather than being dry, these details made reading more interesting. Furthermore, this edition builds on previous ones by Gardner, including explanations from his first edition and subsequent follow-up work. It has been updated in light of the increased academic critique and research that took place after the first edition, and as such, it is worth a look even for owners of the original. I bought this book because I gave my original copy to a friend and needed to upgrade, and I couldn't have been happier that I did so.