Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486275434 ISBN 13: 9780486275437

Publisher: Dover Publications, 1993

One of the English language's most popular and frequently quoted books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was the creation of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), a distinguished scholar and mathematician who wrote under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll. Intended for young readers but enjoyed equally by adults, the fantastic tale transformed children's literature, liberating it from didactic constraints.
The story is deeply but gently satiric, enlivened with an imaginative plot and brilliant use of nonsense. As Alice explores a bizarre underground world, she encounters a cast of strange characters and fanciful beasts: the White Rabbit, March Hare, and Mad Hatter; the sleepy Dormouse and grinning Cheshire Cat; the Mock Turtle, the dreadful Queen of Hearts, and a host of other extraordinary personalities. This edition features Sir John Tenniel's complete original illustrations, bringing to life a beloved classic that has delighted readers and listeners since its first publication in 1865.

Review:

Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new." There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser," seemingly without moral or sense.

For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter

From the Publisher:

The Broadview Literary Texts series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, though lesser-known literature.