The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (Annotated Alice)

In 2015, Alice in Wonderland, the most beloved children’s book of all time, turned 150. To celebrate Alice’s birthday, W.W. Norton & Co. published an updated Deluxe Edition of The Annotated Alice.

The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is a lavish volume. It includes all of the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, as well as over 100 illustrations by many other artists, including Beatrix Potter

In 2015, Alice in Wonderland, the most beloved children’s book of all time, turned 150. To celebrate Alice’s birthday, W.W. Norton & Co. published an updated Deluxe Edition of The Annotated Alice.

The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is a lavish volume. It includes all of the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, as well as over 100 illustrations by many other artists, including Beatrix Potter, Arthur Rackham and Salvador Dali; all of the introductions to the previous editions, as well as an introduction to the 2015 edition by Mark Burstein who has carried on editor Martin Gardner’s work after the latter’s death in 2010; all of Carroll’s writings about the books that appeared in his lifetime; and over 100 annotations resulting from new research since The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition was published in 1999 — although, as Gardner himself points out, there can never be a truly definitive edition, as English professors, historians, logicians and readers around the world continue to research, speculate and argue over the multi-layered meanings of the Alice books.

Making the case for all this meta-analysis, Gardner writes:

“In the case of Alice we are dealing with a very curious, complicated kind of nonsense, written for British readers of another century, and we need to know a great many things that are not part of the text if we wish to capture its full wit and flavor.”

He contends that Alice has endured only because of this interest by adults, and that children today are often “bewildered and frightened by the nightmarish atmosphere of Alice’s dreams” (hence the recent proliferation of editions with illustrations for younger readers).

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

For example, as Alice fell down the Rabbit Hole, she thought, “I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth!” In Carroll’s day, there was considerable popular speculation about what would happen if one did fall through a hole that went straight through the centre of the earth; this is just one example of how current Alice would have been in its day. (Carroll continued his interest in the subject in his later book, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.)

Alice’s conversation with the mouse she met swimming in the Pool of Tears also drew from the world of 19th Century Oxford. She addressed the mouse in French, asking, “Where is my cat?”, because “this was the first sentence in her French lesson-book”. The Annotated Alice reproduces the first page of the 1804 textbook which Alice Liddell was studying at the time — and the first sentence is indeed, “Où est ma chatte?”

Some of the most iconic characters in Alice in Wonderland are the Mad Hatter, the equally crazy March Hare, and the perpetually grinning Cheshire Cat. Most readers would know that “mad as a hatter” was a common term in Victorian England, as the mercury used in curing felt could cause poisoning and the resulting tremors and hallucinations. But many wouldn’t be aware that “mad as a March Hare” and “grinning like a Cheshire Cat” were also common phrases in Carroll’s time. The expression “to grin like a Cheshire Cat” may have come from the fact that Cheshire cheeses were commonly moulded in the shape of a grinning cat, which no doubt appealed to Carroll’s sense of whimsy.

“You are Old, Father William”, the nonsense poem Alice recited to the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, is itself a parody of a long-forgotten didactic poem which is reproduced in its entirety in The Annotated Alice. In fact, nearly all of the nonsense poems in Alice are parodies of verses which would have been familiar to Carroll’s readers; the originals are reproduced in the annotations.

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

When Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking Glass, Alice Liddell and her sisters were learning how to play chess. The annotations to this book begin on Carroll’s preface to the 1897 edition, with a highly detailed analysis of the chess game on which the story is based. But this is perhaps taking literary criticism too far. As Martin Gardner points out: “Considering the staggering difficulties involved in dovetailing a chess game with an amusing nonsense fantasy, Carroll does a remarkable job.” Gardner goes on to point out:

“By a happy accident, chess also ties in beautifully with the mirror-reflection motif. Not only do rooks, bishops and knights come in pairs, but the asymmetric arrangement of one player’s pieces at the start of the game… is an exact mirror reflection of his opponent’s pieces.”

Carroll was always fascinated by inversion, and incorporated back-to-front elements into many of the games he played with children, such as writing a letter back to front, so that the recipient had to hold the letter up to a mirror to read it — in the same way that Alice had to hold the “Jabberwocky” poem up to a mirror.

Martin Gardner reports that after the publication of Through the Looking Glass, there was a flood of Jabberwocky translations; a French and a German translation appear in The Annotated Alice.

The Annotated Alice also provides a detailed etymological analysis of “Jabberwocky”. Some of the words were, or were based on, archaic English terms; others were invented; while others, like “to chortle”, were coined by Carroll and found their way into the Oxford English Dictionary.

Gardner skilfully draws out the common themes in the two Alice books and Carroll’s lesser-known works, such as the “Sylvie and Bruno” books and Symbolic Logic, highlighting Lewis Carroll’s work as a mathematician and logician.

The Annotated Alice presents the first publication of “The Wasp in a Wig”, a section of Through the Looking Glass which was omitted when the book was initially published and only came to light in 1974 when the galley proofs were put up for sale at Sotheby’s.

The End of the Tale

The Annotated Alice also includes information about Lewis Carroll Societies around the world; extensive references for keen Carrollians; a list of film adaptations; and notes about the illustrators featured in this edition.

This lavish and incredibly detailed volume is a must-have for devotees of Alice and her fantastical world.