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The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Follow Alice on her fanciful journey down the rabbit hole and through the mirror where she meets friends and foes like the Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, the Jabberwock, and the Caterpillar!
Unknown Binding
Published October 25, 2001
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About the author
Lewis Carroll
6,180 books8,425 followersThe Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer.
His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense.
Oxford scholar, Church of England Deacon, University Lecturer in Mathematics and Logic, academic author of learned theses, gifted pioneer of portrait photography, colourful writer of imaginative genius and yet a shy and pedantic man, Lewis Carroll stands pre-eminent in the pantheon of inventive literary geniuses.
He also has works published under his real name.
His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense.
Oxford scholar, Church of England Deacon, University Lecturer in Mathematics and Logic, academic author of learned theses, gifted pioneer of portrait photography, colourful writer of imaginative genius and yet a shy and pedantic man, Lewis Carroll stands pre-eminent in the pantheon of inventive literary geniuses.
He also has works published under his real name.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 9, 2025
POST BOOK GROUP UPDATE: The reason Alice appears to have no motivation (see rant below) is that she is the sole intended audience for the story, not a character in it. She is just watching it unfold and seeing what's next. We're not supposed to identify with her or care about her experience; we're supposed to marvel at Lewis Carroll's obsessively clever imaginative-literary-logic-math-game-doggerel gift to a 7 year old child. Which I could do if I wasn't so creeped out.
My original review: The Annotated Alice both got me through the Victorian dreamscape-hellscape that is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass and turned me off to begin with. From the introduction, learning about shy, eccentric bachelor Lewis Carroll's winked-at hobby of forming intense friendships with "charming little girls" creeped me out and had me reading at an arm's length. Alice goes down the rabbit-hole and all I'm hoping is that she can live a normal life and date people her own age. I can't understand Alice's motivation because she never expresses a desire other than to impulsively see what happens next. Her whatevsies attitude of "I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole - and yet - it's rather curious, this kind of life" did not make me curious about her. Does she want to go home? Was it a dream of hers to talk to animals and plants? Is there anything about her that makes this hallucinatory trip meaningful, or did she just happen to fall down the hole that was open to anyone? Do children have strong feelings about anything at all? Not according to this supposedly boring professor of mathematics at Oxford.
The characters she meets are genius, I will grant Carroll that, but there was no story -- it was just one crazily imaginative character or set of characters after another, talking nonsense and pointing the way to the next one. Alice changes size, changes perspective, her world is completely upside down and inside out, parties and games and dances and songs go on for days, but when she wakes from her dream state and returns to dull reality, she merely reflects that she would "perhaps tell her own children the dream of Wonderland and remember her own child-life and happy summer days." This is not "Oh Auntie Em, there's no place like home," it's just one happy summer afternoon for a growing girl who took a nice boat ride and was told an amusing tale by a strangely friendly colleague of her father's.
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There has a killer first sentence, so I hoped it might have more plot, which it did, to a degree. [One thing was certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it -- it was the black kitten's fault entirely. ] The sequel showcases Carroll's passion for symbols, math, games, logic, words, nonsense, and children's nursery rhymes even more so than the original story, especially given the mirror imagery throughout. Here we learn that Alice's favorite words are "Let's pretend," which gives her a motivation, however broad. The chess game is brilliant, if you can follow it - Alice is a pawn who becomes a Queen, etc. Humpty Dumpty appears on the scene and the annotations explode: Students of Finnegans Wake do not have to be reminded that Humpty Dumpty is one of that book's basic symbols: the great cosmic egg whose fall, like the drunken fall of Finnegan, suggests the fall of Lucifer and the fall of man. My note to self: I WISH I WAS READING FINNEGANS WAKE!
Bottom line for my reading experience: At the end, Alice worries that she's in the Red King's dream, saying "I don't like belonging in another person's dream," and basically, neither do I. Looking forward to book group to learn why this is such revered IP. I think the answer is: It's the characters, dummy #bandersnatch #whitepill #redpill #goaskalice
My original review: The Annotated Alice both got me through the Victorian dreamscape-hellscape that is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass and turned me off to begin with. From the introduction, learning about shy, eccentric bachelor Lewis Carroll's winked-at hobby of forming intense friendships with "charming little girls" creeped me out and had me reading at an arm's length. Alice goes down the rabbit-hole and all I'm hoping is that she can live a normal life and date people her own age. I can't understand Alice's motivation because she never expresses a desire other than to impulsively see what happens next. Her whatevsies attitude of "I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole - and yet - it's rather curious, this kind of life" did not make me curious about her. Does she want to go home? Was it a dream of hers to talk to animals and plants? Is there anything about her that makes this hallucinatory trip meaningful, or did she just happen to fall down the hole that was open to anyone? Do children have strong feelings about anything at all? Not according to this supposedly boring professor of mathematics at Oxford.
The characters she meets are genius, I will grant Carroll that, but there was no story -- it was just one crazily imaginative character or set of characters after another, talking nonsense and pointing the way to the next one. Alice changes size, changes perspective, her world is completely upside down and inside out, parties and games and dances and songs go on for days, but when she wakes from her dream state and returns to dull reality, she merely reflects that she would "perhaps tell her own children the dream of Wonderland and remember her own child-life and happy summer days." This is not "Oh Auntie Em, there's no place like home," it's just one happy summer afternoon for a growing girl who took a nice boat ride and was told an amusing tale by a strangely friendly colleague of her father's.
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There has a killer first sentence, so I hoped it might have more plot, which it did, to a degree. [One thing was certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it -- it was the black kitten's fault entirely. ] The sequel showcases Carroll's passion for symbols, math, games, logic, words, nonsense, and children's nursery rhymes even more so than the original story, especially given the mirror imagery throughout. Here we learn that Alice's favorite words are "Let's pretend," which gives her a motivation, however broad. The chess game is brilliant, if you can follow it - Alice is a pawn who becomes a Queen, etc. Humpty Dumpty appears on the scene and the annotations explode: Students of Finnegans Wake do not have to be reminded that Humpty Dumpty is one of that book's basic symbols: the great cosmic egg whose fall, like the drunken fall of Finnegan, suggests the fall of Lucifer and the fall of man. My note to self: I WISH I WAS READING FINNEGANS WAKE!
Bottom line for my reading experience: At the end, Alice worries that she's in the Red King's dream, saying "I don't like belonging in another person's dream," and basically, neither do I. Looking forward to book group to learn why this is such revered IP. I think the answer is: It's the characters, dummy #bandersnatch #whitepill #redpill #goaskalice
November 8, 2025
I'll start by saying that I expected to enjoy the Alice books much more than I actually did. I recognize their importance and Carroll's literary skill (though I wouldn't call it genius), but they are not without flaws – especially the first one, which I appreciated less.
First of all, the frequent and abrupt scene changes are often confusing and seem to come out of nowhere. The fact that they are "nonsense" books doesn’t excuse this, since in Through the Looking-Glass it is handled much better. I didn't expect the characters to be particularly three-dimensional, and I love many of them that way (the Cat, the Caterpillar, Humpty Dumpty), but Alice? She is the protagonist and shows no real development after all she went through in either novel, very strange. I won't even dwell on the fact that in the world through the looking glass only some things are opposites, because otherwise the story would have been truly unmanageable.
However, this review is not just about Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, it’s about this specific annotated edition.
To begin with, many notes read more like fun facts and don’t add meaning or further interpretation to the story. Meanwhile, important things – those who actually add something – are often not given the relevance they deserve.
This brings me to a recurring thought I have whenever I read annotated work: you don’t need to read all of Susan’s Sonntag Against Interpretation to understand that one should focus more on what the novel is saying – and what the author wants to convey – rather than searching for a hidden symbolic meaning in everything. Some passages look overinterpreted, and as someone who despises overinterpretation, I’d much rather concentrate on what the author actually intended. It’s one of the first things you learn in any literature class: the focus is how the author views his book, NOT how YOU view it, but I suppose that’s a debatable opinion (that I’ll defend to the end). For example, on page 67 the Cat tells Alice – who asks him for directions and “doesn’t care much where” – “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”; the corresponding note (no. 7 on page 68) recites: “An echo (of these remarks) is heard in Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road:
“we gotta go and never stop going till we get there
Where are we going, man?”
I don’t know but we gotta go."
Maybe a stretch? I know it’s not that terrible, but there are few things that annoy me as much. The same goes for most astrophysics connections – like comparing the Mad Tea Party, where it’s always six o’clock, to “the portion of De Sitter’s model of the cosmos in which time stand eternally still.”
And finally, can we please stop with this child-friends narrative? There is no such thing as a “child-friend”. Any Carroll apologist who wants to convince me that he wasn’t a pedophile won’t be heard, and those writing “Carroll was not the pedophile they made him out to be” articles should frankly feel ashamed. I’ll let a few notes speak for themselves:
Page 66, note 5: “It was surely not without malice that Carroll turned a male baby into a pig, for he had a bad opinion of little boys. […] Carroll now and then made an effort to be friendly with a little boy, but usually only when the lad had sisters that Carroll wanted to meet.”
Page 173, note 11: “[…] In choosing the name “Lily” Carroll may have had in mind his young friend Lilia Scott MacDonald, the eldest Daughter of George MacDonald. Lilia was called “My White Lily” by her father, and Carroll’s letters to her (after she passed fifteen) contain many teasing references to her advancing age. The statement here that Lily is too young to play chess as well have been part of the teasing.”
Page 215, note 16: It is possible that Carroll thought of these dream rushes as symbols of his child-friends. The loveliest seem to be the most distant, just out of reach, and, once picked, they quicly fade and lose their scent and beauty.
As the saying goes, one coincidence is just a coincidence, two coincidences are a clue, but three coincidences are a proof. I’m sure Carroll would have LOVED high school anime.
First of all, the frequent and abrupt scene changes are often confusing and seem to come out of nowhere. The fact that they are "nonsense" books doesn’t excuse this, since in Through the Looking-Glass it is handled much better. I didn't expect the characters to be particularly three-dimensional, and I love many of them that way (the Cat, the Caterpillar, Humpty Dumpty), but Alice? She is the protagonist and shows no real development after all she went through in either novel, very strange. I won't even dwell on the fact that in the world through the looking glass only some things are opposites, because otherwise the story would have been truly unmanageable.
However, this review is not just about Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, it’s about this specific annotated edition.
To begin with, many notes read more like fun facts and don’t add meaning or further interpretation to the story. Meanwhile, important things – those who actually add something – are often not given the relevance they deserve.
This brings me to a recurring thought I have whenever I read annotated work: you don’t need to read all of Susan’s Sonntag Against Interpretation to understand that one should focus more on what the novel is saying – and what the author wants to convey – rather than searching for a hidden symbolic meaning in everything. Some passages look overinterpreted, and as someone who despises overinterpretation, I’d much rather concentrate on what the author actually intended. It’s one of the first things you learn in any literature class: the focus is how the author views his book, NOT how YOU view it, but I suppose that’s a debatable opinion (that I’ll defend to the end). For example, on page 67 the Cat tells Alice – who asks him for directions and “doesn’t care much where” – “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”; the corresponding note (no. 7 on page 68) recites: “An echo (of these remarks) is heard in Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road:
“we gotta go and never stop going till we get there
Where are we going, man?”
I don’t know but we gotta go."
Maybe a stretch? I know it’s not that terrible, but there are few things that annoy me as much. The same goes for most astrophysics connections – like comparing the Mad Tea Party, where it’s always six o’clock, to “the portion of De Sitter’s model of the cosmos in which time stand eternally still.”
And finally, can we please stop with this child-friends narrative? There is no such thing as a “child-friend”. Any Carroll apologist who wants to convince me that he wasn’t a pedophile won’t be heard, and those writing “Carroll was not the pedophile they made him out to be” articles should frankly feel ashamed. I’ll let a few notes speak for themselves:
Page 66, note 5: “It was surely not without malice that Carroll turned a male baby into a pig, for he had a bad opinion of little boys. […] Carroll now and then made an effort to be friendly with a little boy, but usually only when the lad had sisters that Carroll wanted to meet.”
Page 173, note 11: “[…] In choosing the name “Lily” Carroll may have had in mind his young friend Lilia Scott MacDonald, the eldest Daughter of George MacDonald. Lilia was called “My White Lily” by her father, and Carroll’s letters to her (after she passed fifteen) contain many teasing references to her advancing age. The statement here that Lily is too young to play chess as well have been part of the teasing.”
Page 215, note 16: It is possible that Carroll thought of these dream rushes as symbols of his child-friends. The loveliest seem to be the most distant, just out of reach, and, once picked, they quicly fade and lose their scent and beauty.
As the saying goes, one coincidence is just a coincidence, two coincidences are a clue, but three coincidences are a proof. I’m sure Carroll would have LOVED high school anime.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2025
Not really three stars, but I reserve two stars for books I merely endured.
I expect most parents have had the experience of making up a fantastical story for their children at bedtime. You're making it up as you go and there's no arc to the story, no thread that holds it all together. That's what Alice in Wonderland felt like to me. As for the credit it gets for its druggy weirdness, we've all had weirder dreams than the story in this book.
I liked Through the Looking Glass better. The structure of the chess game is clever, as is the wordplay.
The annotations helped me understand the book and Carroll better. However, it is hard to understand why there are so many people obsessed with this book.
I expect most parents have had the experience of making up a fantastical story for their children at bedtime. You're making it up as you go and there's no arc to the story, no thread that holds it all together. That's what Alice in Wonderland felt like to me. As for the credit it gets for its druggy weirdness, we've all had weirder dreams than the story in this book.
I liked Through the Looking Glass better. The structure of the chess game is clever, as is the wordplay.
The annotations helped me understand the book and Carroll better. However, it is hard to understand why there are so many people obsessed with this book.
May 12, 2025
a mildly interesting dissertation read
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews