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Title: The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition |
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Review of The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition
- 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.
Book Description
- "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
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Comments for The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition
- Posted on 2008-07-14
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.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-06-14
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.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-05-03
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!"
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-02-29
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.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-01-20
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson... the master of sublime nonsense.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, along with its sequel, Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there, where done by a person ahead of his time. His name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, pen name, Lewis Carroll.
Both are in this modified annotated version combined with the original illustrations by John Tenniel, but not only that, also have the suppressed episode "The Wasp in a wig" in Through the looking glass. Intended for children, this particular book will delight adults as well because it has annotations and information making this even more enjoyable. The information and comments given mostly by Carroll's biographers/scholars/researchers help you understand the meanings behind the puns, word plays, poems, conversation and situations going on behind Carroll's mind (though nobody knows in fact the purpose of the author's intentions, but the annotations or comments were made by hard research or extracted from the author's original manuscript, so they are quite accurate). Mind that this is very useful because most of AAIW and TTLG were made from private jokes, puns, word plays and Victorian manners that not all people knows about. Some were made for England native people, and even further, only friends and collegues of Carroll can understand them. This books are the essence of imagination and fantasy, opening doors to a LOT of authors that in some way or the other included in their works some of Carroll's ideas/themes... so having explanations alongside the story will definately help you to have a better grasp of such masterpiece that had transcended over the centuries.
This book is the one to go, unless another updated version comes along. It has everything you want... both books included with explanations and Tenniel's illustrations... it can't get better than that! :-).
Oh!... btw... handle with care. The book is a bit fragile, specially the dust cover jacket.
~ Life, what is it but a dream~
Score: 5