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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN num: 9780393048476
ISBN number: 0393048470
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 312
Printing Date: 1999-11
Publishing house: W. W. Norton & Company
Sale Popularity Level: 3493
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Product 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, very 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 very 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 Review:
'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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Rated by buyers 
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The book arrived promptly via standard shipping. I purchaed this book to replace a much earlier and well-read edition of The Annotated Alice. The dust cover and the book arrived in excellent condition. I am very pleased with the book and Amazon's service. As you may have guessed, I very much like children's literature and find that more often than not, the content is far more interesting to adults.
Rated by buyers -
I remember my frustrations with reading âaeAliceâ when I was young. Apparently it was an interesting story about animals and weird things and so on, but very quickly my reading stumbled onto nonsense verses and things so strange I donâ(tm)t know what to make of them. As a child I quickly lost interest and put down my book, that is until I encountered this wonderful annotated version by Martin Gardiner. Having enjoyed Gardinerâ(tm)s countless mathematical books and Scientific American columns, I was intrigued by this book.
This is a book that actually delivers what it promises. The large format of the book makes it easy to read and pleasing to the eye. The original drawings for the book by Tenniel are included, making it quite interesting. In the wide margins, Gardiner makes clear the countless curiosities, verses, puns, and mathematical oddities. Some of those things were meant to be understood only by a select group of people living in Oxford at the time Lewis Carroll wrote his work. Gardiner therefore draws upon a wealth of research by Alice fans all over the world to come to an understanding of all these oddities. The result is a much more enriching experience and much more pleasurable reading of the story.
At any rate, I donâ(tm)t take the Alice story as seriously as some of the fans do, but I was pleased I read this annotated edition once. I plan to find again my old childhood copy and re-read the story without annotation for enjoyment. Note that the annotated Alice went through various editions, this (âaeDefinitive annotated Aliceâ being the third, most up-to-date and most complete, including the original illustrations by Tenniel and both sets of annotations in the original âaeAnnotated Aliceâ and in the âaeMore Annotated Aliceâ. This is the edition to buy.
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
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!"
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