Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. Edited by Martin Gardner. Illustrated by John Tenniel. Norton, 2000. ISBN 0-393-04847-0. $29.95. 312 pp.” 7+ FI Reviewed by Robert Maxwell When Gardner's The Annotated Alice was published in 1960, it was an incredible feat, containing the text of both Alice and Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as well as copious notes telling readers everything they ever wanted to know about the text. By the late 1980s, Gardner had accumulated more notes, but was unable to persuade the publisher to do a revision. Instead, he wrote a sequel, More Annotated Alice, published by Random House in 1990, with Peter Newell's Alice illustrations substituted for Tenniel's. In this third,”definitive” edition, Gardner has at last succeeded in recombining the notes (most of them-there are some things in More Annotated Alice, such as a number of translations of”Jabberwocky,” that didn't make it to this new edition) and has returned to the Tenniel illustrations. This book will be a welcome addition to any Alice fan's library. The familiar style of the original Annotated Alice, with text in the middle and notes in outside columns, is still there-there are just more notes. Tenniel's illustrations have been redone, and are crisper than those of the 1960 edition. In addition, an unpublished episode from Through the Looking Glass, called “The Wasp in a Wig,” discovered after the 1960 edition had been published, has been added in an appendix at the back.
