(H/B) THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED LEWIS CARROLL

Παρουσίαση

On 4 July 1862, the Rev'd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a young Oxford Don, who was then, and for nearly half a century remained Mathematical Lecturer of Christ Church, took the day off and went a-rowing with the small daughter of the Dean. That eventful picnic was duly noted in his neat and interminable diary that night. The entry runs thus: 'I made an expedition up the river to Godstow with the three Liddells; we had tea on the bank there and did not reach Christ Church until half-past eight.'
But at that time he did not deem one subsequently enhanced detail of the day sufficiently important to be worth chronicling. He said nothing of the fairy tale he began to spin 'all in the golden afternoon' there in the shadow of the hayrick to which the four Argonauts retreated from the heat of the sun. It was a tale about just such a little girl as the gravely attentive Alice Liddell, who used to prod him when he ventured to let lapse for a time this story of another Alice falling down a rabbit-hole into the world of the unexpected. In response to such proddings, he carried the story along on that and other afternoons and finally committed it to manuscript as 'Alice's Adventures Underground'. Somewhat expanded this was published three years later under the "nom de guerre" of Lewis Carroll and under the title of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'.
In the sixty years that have passed since then, this gay, roving dream story and its sequel have seeped into the folklore of the world. It has become as deeply rooted a part of that folklore as the legend of Cinderella or any other tale first told back in the unfathomable past. Not Tiny Tim, nor Falstaff, nor Rip Van Winkle, nor any other character wrought in the English tongue seems now a more permanent part of that tongue's heritage than do the high-handed Humpty-Dumpty, the wistful Mad Hatter, the somewhat arbitrary Queen of Hearts, the evasive Cheshire Cat and the gently pathetic White Knight.
The tale has been read aloud in all the nurseries from Oxford town to the ends of the Empire. And there is no telling how many copies of it have been printed and sold. [...] (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Introduction
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking-Glass & What Alice Found There
Sylvie and Bruno
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
Rhyme and Reason
Miscellaneous Works
Early Verse
Puzzles from Wonderland
Prologues
College Rhymes and Notes
Acrostics, Inscriptions and other verses
Three Sunsets and other poems
Stories
A Miscellany