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. 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. Yes, Alice can be enjoyed on its own merits, but The Annotated Alice appeals to the nosy parker in all of us. 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. Chesterton, who abhor the notion of putting Lewis Carroll's masterpiece under a microscope and analyzing it within an inch of its whimsical life. 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. "What is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations!" "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Color, two-tone, and black-and-white photos and illustrations throughout Illustrated with John Tenniel's classic, 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. His Annotated Alice, first published in 1959, has over half a million copies in print around the world and is beloved by both families and scholars―for it was Gardner who first decoded many of the mathematical riddles and wordplay that lay ingeniously embedded in Carroll's two classic stories, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.įorty 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 1959 edition with his 1990 volume, More Annotated Alice, as well as additional discoveries drawn from Gardner's encyclopedic knowledge of the texts. 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.įor over half a century, Martin Gardner has established himself as one of the world's leading authorities on Lewis Carroll.
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