Product Description

'A landmark, bringing together a lifetime's work on Lewis Carroll by writer and mathematician Martin Gardner. He dazzles on Carroll's puzzles and games of logic and entertains on everything from Alice's influence on the Beat poet Jack Kerouac to howmercury in hat linings turned hatters mad...it is unsurpassed' - Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times 'The indispensable guide to a classic of English literature...no one who has ever wondered about the meaning of 'Jabberwocky' should fail to include on their Christmas list' - Robert McCrum, Observer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35302 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
'A landmark, bringing together a lifetime's work on Lewis Carroll by writer and mathematician Martin Gardner. He dazzles on Carroll's puzzles and games of logic and entertains on everything from Alice's influence on the Beat poet Jack Kerouac to how mercury in hat linings turned hatters mad...it is unsurpassed' - Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times 'The indispensable guide to a classic of English literature...no one who has ever wondered about the meaning of 'Jabberwocky' should fail to include on their Christmas list' - Robert McCrum, Observer

About the Author
Martin Gardner is the undisputed king of Carroll scholarship. He is also the author of many books on mathematical puzzles in Penguin. Now 87-years old, he lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

A lovely twist to a great book
Everyone thinks they know about Alice in Wonderland - my own 'knowledge' comes from years of obsessive viewing of the superlative Disney feature as a child - but this terrific little book will prove you wrong. There are enough notes in here to keep even the most apathetic reader pacified; and the book is designed in such a way that the notes aid the reader, rather than becoming a constant pain. Presented alongside the text (reproduced with original Tenniel drawings of the characters) the notes are immediate and gripping, and whether you are studying this book or merely reading it for pleasure, i can thoroughly reccommend this edition. Well worth your money and your time.

Alice: wealth of academic wit revealed.
This is Martin Gardner's classic edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking-Glass, annotated to explain, for the modern reader, the wealth of hidden references in the books: mathematics, chess, logic, Victorian politics, the original poems Carroll parodied, and much more.

Recommended
This is good stuff. The notes (printed alongside the main text) make Lewis Carroll's weirdy stories a whole lot more approachable for curious grown-up modern readers.