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The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by [Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel, Martin Gardner]

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Lewis Carroll

The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition Kindle Edition

by Lewis Carroll (Author), John Tenniel (Illustrator), Martin Gardner (Editor, Introduction) Format: Kindle Edition

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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 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.

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 1959 edition with his 1990 volume, More Annotated Alice, as well as additional discoveries drawn from Gardner's encyclopedic knowledge of the texts. 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.

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433 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

November 17, 1999
File size

24409 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A welcome, greatly expanded third edition of Gardners beloved critical edition of Carrolls Victorian fairy tales. One of the longest ongoing love affairs in literature has to be that between Gardner, a prolific, popular writer on math and science, and Carrolls ostensible childrens tales, Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. With a dedication rare even among scholars, Gardner has tracked down origins and meanings of the wordplay and mathematical puzzles the sly Carroll embedded in his texts. He has also researched Charles Dodgson's life and illuminated the two stories sly parody of high Victorian culture. This new volume combines the notes from The Annotated Alice (1960) and More Annotated Alice (1990) with Gardners latest discoveries, offering both ardent fans of Carroll's work and newcomers a chance to read the texts in the light of Gardner's labors. The result is rather like sitting in on the creation of a work of art; the manner in which the shy mathematician and tutor Dodgson poured everything that fascinated him (children's games, chess, mathematical riddles and logic, an amused view of Victorian literature and society) into the work by his alter ego Carroll is illuminated through Gardner's lucid and copious notes. They run in a narrow (and surprisingly unobtrusive) column accompanying Carroll's text on each page, turning the book into a fluid mix of Carroll and Gardner. The illustrations, by John Tenniel, also provide fertile ground for Gardner's commentary. The notes are so clear, enthusiastic, and helpful that it is now hard to imagine Carroll without Gardner. A unique collaboration has produced, for once, a book that lives up to its name. As close to a definitive take on a classic work as anyone is likely to come. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

Clarkson Potter published The Annotated Alice in 1960, and Gardner published the sequel More Annotated Alice in 1990. Here, Gardner combines and expands both to produce The Definitive Edition. This presents the full texts of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and "The Wasp in a Wig," a "suppressed" chapter of Looking-Glass. Each of these texts is accompanied by a lengthy marginal commentary that identifies historical and literary references and allusions, explains Carroll's logical and mathematical puzzles, and interprets colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions. Gardner's commentary is sufficiently detailed to be informative without burdening Alice with excessive pedantic baggage. The Definitive Edition also includes Tenniel's original illustrations and an exhaustive annotated list by David Shaefer of Alice on the screen. This is a happy contribution to those who appreciate Lewis Carroll.
-Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, GA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

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 --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Lewis Carroll is a pseudonym of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who was born on January 27, 1832, and died on January 14, 1898. His most famous works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There; and The Hunting of the Snark.

Martin Gardner (1914-2010) is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on Lewis Carroll and his work. The author of more than a hundred books, he wrote the "Mathematical Games" column for Scientific American for twenty-five years and has been hailed by Douglas Hofstadter as "one of the great intellects produced in this country in this century."

The many works of Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) include many humorous and political cartoons for Punch and other periodicals of the time, but he is best known for his illustrations of the original editions of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Class. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00FFUSCVO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Updated, Subsequent edition (November 17, 1999)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 17, 1999
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 24409 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 433 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #286,953 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #30 in Family & Parenting Literature Guides
- #99 in History of Books
- #141 in Children's Literary Criticism (Books)

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Lewis Carroll

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Lewis Carroll was born on 27 January 1832. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford and went on to become a mathematics lecturer there from 1855 to 1881. Lewis Carroll's most famous works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (published in 1865) and the sequel Alice Through the Looking-Glass, which contains the classic nonsense poem The Jabberwocky (published in 1872).

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Top reviews from the United States

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Ashley P Reece

Not worth it

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2018

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Not worth the money. I had my class order this because we ordered the annotated Wizard of Oz and loved it (there’s a 100 page biography of Baum and each annotation is in depth and helpful). However, this book was a total let down. We would’ve been better off purchasing a $5 paperback and reading the free info online. The pictures are pretty, but the annotations say “go see this source”. He basically even says in the introduction, “I’m too lazy to actually annotate what people want me to annotate, so I left that part out.” There’s nothing useful at all in the annotations. It is ironic to call a book a definitive 150th annotated edition of the text and then not actually even bother annotating it. Even the biographical and background information at the beginning was quite short and disappointing considering there’s 150 years’ worth of information on Carroll and the publishing history of the text. In the Oz book there are facts about the film versions in the annotations, symbolism, allusions, allegory, pop culture references, etc. In this book? There are barely any annotations at all, and when they do show up, they are merely pointing to another source. That’s not really why people purchase an annotated edition of a book. Seriously a major let down. I regret making my class purchase a lug around this heavy, hardbacked edition when we could’ve gotten the same amount of info from a MUCH cheaper version were the annotations not going to be helpful.

93 people found this helpful

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YORAM COHEN

A charming book, full of surprising insights into the true meaning and historical background of many innocent looking passages

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2018

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A charming book, full of surprising insights into the true meaning and historical background of various seemingly straightforward passages in the Alice books. So much so, that one wishes that there were more of these annotations.
One of the things I most appreciate in this edition is the generosity of both its annotators, the late Martin Gardner and his successor, Mr. Mark Burstein. Their willingness to read, acknowledge and often accept suggestions of interpretation and emendations from readers, who are not necessarily Carrollian experts, is absolutely unparalleled in the academic world, and only helped to enrich the resulting work.

I was also touched by, and agreed with Mr. Burstein's apologia for the section of "The Wasp In a Wig", originally omitted by Lewis Carroll himself for the final printed book. It sheds a different light on Alice's personality. Throughout both books Alice is presented as a rather snobbish and self-centered person, but in "The Wasp In a Wig" she is shown to be compassionate and ready to help, even though the object of her compassion, the Wasp, is a socially inferior and quite unfriendly creature. It is indeed a pity that Lewis Carroll agreed to omit it under Tenniel's pressure.

Still, there is one shortcoming that I would wish were not in this edition. It is the choice of illustrations. Instead of the multitude of modern-day far-fetched illustrations, I would like to have seen the original colored renditions of Tenniel's drawings for the "Nursery Alice" (in which Alice wears a yellow dress), as well as Harry G. Theaker's renderings of the Tenniel drawings for the 1911 Macmillan edition of the complete Alice (in which Alice wears the now iconic blue dress).

24 people found this helpful

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Chaim J.

Confusing description of contents

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2020

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The truth is, I still don't know exactly how these products differ. But there has been a series of releases over the years of "Annotated Alice" books: "More," "Deluxe," "Definitive," etc. I mistakenly thought that I was getting all content included in this volume. But in fact this volume contains notes referring the reader to other volumes in this cloud of books by Gardiner. There is lots of content here, and perhaps if I were better informed I would find that this was the best choice I could have made. But in my current state of information I feel a bit ripped off.

9 people found this helpful

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Brian C.

A work of genius...

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2012

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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.

32 people found this helpful

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Kathrine

Nice!

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2019

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This is really nice. Perfect for what I was looking for. It‘s beautiful, without the cover as you can see in the picture I’m sharing.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Barry Cooper

Beautiful brand new edition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2015

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For the avoidance of doubt, and confusion caused by Amazon's policy of mixing up reviews for different editions, I'm referring here to the brand new 150th anniversary deluxe edition. All earlier reviews (apart from the last one, which is sight unseen), refer to previous editions of the book.

I bought this to replace my Penguin copy of the 1970 revised version of the 1960 original, so I haven't seen the expanded versions which appeared between 1970 and 2015. It's going to take several months to read the whole book; so far I've just flipped through and dipped into a few entries, which are a lot more detailed than in the 1970 edition.

The book is beautiful - the extra colour illustrations make all the difference. If you're a Carroll fan and don't already have one of the expanded versions it's an essential addition to your library. I can't give a link here, but an online search for this edition and "review" will bring up a detailed review published in The New Yorker. You can get a good idea of what it looks like from the page photographs Amazon have included.

At least one of the pages in my copy has a mark from the printing process, but it's of minor importance and I'm not going to change it in case the next copy is worse. Also, check out the measurements of this book before buying - it's more or less square and fits very oddly onto a bookshelf!

57 people found this helpful

Nick Reef

Wonderfully detailed annotation, but poor art reproduction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

The annotated detail allows the reader to greatly deepen their understanding of these 'wonderful' books. However, for me, Norton the publishers, have wasted an opportunity to create the definitive Alice volume, by economising in the printing. I know there can be a certain charm in non-glossy artwork (especially for pulp comics), but I am disappointed with the dull quality of the printing of these (albeit comprehensive) fabulous illustrations for this book. I provide two photographs from this annotated book.

2 people found this helpful

chris everest

It's NOT ANNOTATED

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 9, 2021

Verified Purchase

It calls itself the Annotated Alice which I presumed (aha!!!) meant that there would be the text and alongside it there would be explanations/interesting details about the allusions/references that Carroll was making. This book is a flimsy copy of the text with a mediocre introduction and simplistic biography of the writer. Absolutely useless!

angela jacobs

Alice in Wonderland in Hardback

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 23, 2019

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I purchased the hardback to replace the paper back version which is falling to bits.

One person found this helpful

Newgardendesign

this is a lovely edition, my whole family is ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 15, 2016

Verified Purchase

this is a lovely edition, my whole family is quite taken with it especially as it shows different artwork and styles of illustration for Alice over the last 150 years .

4 people found this helpful