Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

This Norton Critical Edition reprints the 1897 editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and the 1876 edition of The Hunting of the Snark. New to the Second Edition is "The Wasp in a Wig," a recently discovered episode Carroll deleted from Through the Looking-Glass, but which fits into the story in interesting ways. Each text is accompanied by ample explanatory notes. "Backgrounds" reprints new selections from recent biographies of Carroll and from recent editions of his diaries and letters. Our understanding of and appreciation for Carroll's life and literature are deepened by new contributions from Anne Clark, Tony Beale, E. M. Rowell, and, most revealingly, Carroll himself. "Criticism" retains seven seminal critiques from the First Edition while adding four important recent essays by Nina Auerbach, Roger Henkle, Robert Polhemus, and Donald Rackin. A revised and updated Selected Bibliography is also included.

LEWIS CARROLL (1832-1898) was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, as English author and mathematician. His masterpiece, ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, had modest origins: it was hand written and illustrated as a Christmas gift for a child friend, Lice Liddell. Three years later it was published as ALICE'S ADVENUTRES IN WONDERLAND under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll--to immediate and rousing success. It has since become one of the most beloved and well-known classics of all time.


Helen Oxenbury says that she enjoyed ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND when her mother read it to her as a child. The text still makes her laugh; even now she'll come across a passage of the book and think what wonderful nonsense it is. For today's children, she has made Alice a modern child, but otherwise, she says, it's just her view. Helen Oxenbury has won the Kate Greenaway Medal, as well as many other prestigious awards.