A deluxe edition of Lewis Carroll's timeless tale of wondrously charming nonsense, in time for its 150th anniversary
When Alice follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, little does she know that she is traveling to a world of magic where common-sense is turned upside-down. The dream worlds of nonsensical Wonderland and the backwards Looking-Glass kingdom are full of the unexpected: a baby turns into a pig, time is missing at a tea-party, and a wild chess game makes the seven-year-old Alice a queen. Displaying Lewis Carroll's gift for sparkling wordplay, puzzles, and riddles, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass offer magical adventure, pointed satire of Victorian England, and playful explorations of sophisticated logic. Yet amid Carroll's antic humor and joyful creation, poignant moments of nostalgia for fleeting childhood give the stories extraordinary emotional depth. And wherever Carroll takes Alice, John Tenniel's iconic illustrations follow with whimsical depictions of her tizzying journeys. Original, experimental, and unparalleled for pure delight, the adventures of Alice in Wonderland are tales to be read and shared across generations.
Lewis Carroll's brilliantly timeless tales-in a deluxe 150th-anniversary edition. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read
Original, experimental, and unparalleled in their charm, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There have enchanted readers for generations. The topsy-turvy dream worlds of Wonderland and the Looking-Glass realm are full of the unexpected: A baby turns into a pig, time stands still at a "mad" tea-party, and a chaotic game of chess turns seven-year-old Alice into a queen. These unforgettable tales-filled with sparkling wordplay and unbridled imagination-balance joyous nonsense with poignant moments of longing for the lost innocence of childhood.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
“A work of glorious intelligence and literary devices…Nonsense becomes a form of higher sense”
–Malcolm Bradbury“
Alice in Wonderland is one of the top 25 books of all time. I always loved the book and I always loved the various characters, the psychedelic nature of it and kind-of odd allegorical stories inside stories. I always thought it was beautiful.”
–Jonny Depp
“Wonderland and the world through the Looking Glass were, I always knew, different from other imagined worlds. Nothing could be changed, although things in the story were always changing…Carroll moves his readers as he moves chess pieces and playing cards.”
–A. S. Byatt“It would not have occurred to me even to suspect that the “children’s tale” was in brilliant ways coded to be read by adults and was in fact an English classic, a universally acclaimed intellectual tour de force and what might be described as a psychological/anthropological dissection of Victorian England. It seems not to have occurred to me that the child-Alice of drawing rooms, servants, tea and crumpets and chess, was of a distinctly different background than my own. I must have been the ideal reader: credulous, unjudging, eager, thrilled. I knew only that I believed in Alice, absolutely.”
–Joyce Carol Oates“The
Alices are the greatest nonsense ever written, and far greater, in my view, than most sense.”
–Philip Pullman
