A week of celebration about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland wouldn’t be complete without a recommendation of a title that will tell you absolutely everything you ever wanted to know about Alice, Wonderland, and everything in between.
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition was compiled and written by Martin Gardner. It is the complete version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There... but there’s soooo much more to it than that.
Readers of all things Alice know quite well how many tricky, secretive nuances exist in that text. There are inside jokes and obscure references that a modern reader won’t necessarily catch. But The Annotated Alice points them all out alongside the text of the books, deciphers what doesn’t make sense, and explains cultural references of the time. Not to mention, it also includes:
- Hundreds of annotations and recently deciphered Carroll puns and riddles.
- Crisp reproductions of the original illustrations John Tenniel illustrations (THE best illustrations of any version of this story, if you ask me), plus a dozen new, recently discovered pencil sketches.
- A filmography of every Alice-related film.
Frankly, it’s just fun. It’s bursting with facts and knowledge. It’s all things Alice. (I also recommend The Annotated Godfather but that’s a tale for another time…)
What’s one of the things that has always completely baffled you in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
Novel Novice 
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