Vintage Classic "The Annotated Alice" First Edition, Hardbound W/Dust Jacket, Excellent Condition, Lewis Carroll, Martin Gardner, Tenniel. Published by Bramhall House, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Includes the full text of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" cleverly annotated by Martin Gardner in a 352 page 8.5" X 11" cloth hardbound book with its original dust jacket. Includes John Tenniel's original illustrations. Excellent condition, crisp and clean text, appears nearly unread. No marks, signatures, or plates. The jacket has some slight shelf wear, and there are two slight tears (repaired) on two internal pages.

When I was first in college, way back in the day, everyone had a copy of this book in some form or another; mine was a faded and dog-eared paperback pocketbook which I carried with me for decades. Alice was nearly inscrutable then (and still mostly is, in my opinion). But this clever reference book went a long way towards deciphering Alice's strangely psychedelic-like journey down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. But, you had to be there, I guess. Martin Gardner, who provides the annotations herein, was a respected polymath and a relentless author who provided informative commentaries as well as original ideas on a wide variety of subjects, mostly relating to science, mathematics, magic, puzzles, and his life-long love of children's books. And, at one point he was, non-ironically, the editor of Humpty Dumpty Magazine. In "The Annotated Alice" Gardner goes to great lengths to explain the many mathematical riddles, wordplay, and literary references found in Carroll's works. For me, this meticulous scholarship took too much out of the story and blunted its impact on my blossoming imagination, but we all tried to read it and pretend we understood what the heck he was talking about. Ah, to be a Sophomore once more! Like I say, you had to be there....PS: One thing I had never really noticed was Gardner's assessment of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" as a "forgettable novel" which is proffered while Alice is visiting one of the most psychedelic of all Carroll's creatures, the Cheshire Cat!  

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE