The Complete Alice in Wonderland (Wonderland Imprints)

522 Pages·2010·13.87 MB·English

by  Carroll Lewis

THE COMPLETE ALICE IN
WONDERLAND
Kindle Master Editions
Volume I
Comprising the Unabridged Texts of:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
The Nursery “Alice”
The Hunting of the Snark
By Lewis Carroll
With Kent David Kelly
A collection of the works of Lewis Carroll, uniquely annotated. This
collection and all essays are copyright 2010 by Kent David Kelly.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the author.
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Wonderland Imprints
Attn: Kent David Kelly
[email protected]
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000867874518
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Return to the Beginning of the Book
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Master Edition
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Reflections on Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking-Glass
The Wasp in a Wig
Reflections on the Looking-Glass
Alice's Adventures Under Ground
Reflections on the Under Ground
The Nursery “Alice”
Reflections on the Nursery “Alice”
The Hunting of the Snark
Reflections on the Snark
Beyond Wonderland
Afterword
INTRODUCTION TO THE MASTER EDITION
By Kent David Kelly
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND is—deservedly—one of the
best-loved books in all the world. It is a triumph not only of the imagination, but
also of wit, humor, logical paradox, and the ageless appeal of Victorian charm.
Excellent editions of this most excellent book are to be discovered everywhere.
Finding a quality electronic version of Alice is, however, a confounding exercise
in futility.
Many of the electronic editions are hastily produced, poorly formatted,
unedited, or even incomplete. Worse, the abbreviated title Alice in Wonderland
can refer to both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-
Glass, and What Alice Found There; or, only the first book; or, incomplete
excerpts of each (and often without any publisher clarification on the matter).
Due to these well-intentioned yet oddly universal mistakes in the world of
electronic publishing, a need was seen for one definitive Kindle Master Edition
of the Alice works, created and formatted specifically for the Kindle.
As a Kindle owner and devotee myself, I am very sympathetic to the peculiar
woes which readers suffer as a result of over-exposure to amateurish electronic
documents. The problems in such works often include (but are by no means
limited to): spelling errors; font size issues; character identification issues (such
as “w” appearing as “vv,” or the word “corner” as “comer”); forced hyphenation
breaks; indentation and spacing issues; spurious pagination; nonexistent tables of
contents; a lack of uniquely-created backing matter (glossaries, research essays,
endnotes, etc.); incomplete front matter; footnote errors; illustration errors (or no
illustrations at all); missing poetry or paragraphs; absent or profligate italics, and
much, much more. “Curiouser and curiouser” indeed! In the interests of reader
sanity, I have endeavored to make The Complete Alice in Wonderland as correct,
complete, user friendly, and simply enjoyable as possible.
Beyond such assuaged frustrations, of course, good readers also demand
Master Editions of the texts themselves! In this regard, I have offered not only
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but also Through the Looking-Glass, and
What Alice Found There. Further, this edition includes Alice’s Adventures Under
Ground (the first draft of Wonderland), The Wasp in a Wig (a long-lost chapter of
Through the Looking-Glass), The Nursery “Alice” (an abridged but enlightening
supplementary text of the original story), and The Hunting of the Snark (with
explanatory notes from Lewis Carroll, revealing its relevance to Wonderland). I
trust that the inclusion of these rarer works will provide the Alice devotee with a
fascinating and far more inclusive understanding of Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
and Alice Liddell herself, which the two common “core” books alone cannot
hope to satisfy.
Of course, these works in and of themselves do not tell the entire story. I
have also specially written many essays and background articles to support and
illuminate Carroll’s masterpieces. These essays include chronologies,
biographies, explanatory notes, and a complete glossary of unfamiliar
Carrolliana and Victoriana. Additional relevant materials, such as diary entries,
letters, period articles and quotations (from Carroll, Alice and others) are
included as well. I can certainly guarantee that any Alice fan or Carrollian
scholar reading this edition—regardless of their age or their own adventures—
will find a muchness of treasures they have never seen before!
Considering the magnitude of this research, writing and editing project,
mistakes are certain to creep in. (Perfection, Carroll himself might say, is our
unreachable destination; but error is our ongoing journey.) If you, the reader,
have any corrections, recommended additions, or simply a comment concerning
this work and its supporting materials, your feedback is always welcome! I will
be more than happy to attribute those who assist in this
“perfecting” endeavor (by name or username, as you prefer) in a future edition
of this work.
In this regard, please feel free to visit me at my author page on Amazon
(http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004AO4O36), my Facebook site
(http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000867874518), or the page
specifically crafted for The Complete Alice in Wonderland. I am also the author
of the Carrollian-Lovecraftian “mash-up,” Cthulhu in Wonderland: The Madness
of Alice, for those who are interested in further exploration of the darkly
humorous nature of insanity (http://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Wonderland-
Dreadful-Mash-Ups-ebook/dp/B0049H8WSC/). You can of course also reach me
personally at any time via e-mail, at [email protected].
An electronic text, of course, will always have its own advantages and
disadvantages—all of them considerable. For those Alice fanatics (like me!) who
would prefer to own the finest hardcopy versions as well, I can unreservedly
recommend The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, and The Annotated
Hunting of the Snark, both written by Martin Gardner. Mister Gardner’s insights
into Carroll’s texts are meticulous, brilliant and fascinating. Even better, he has a
tremendous respect for Carroll’s favored illustrators, John Tenniel and Henry
Holiday. These annotated editions are beautiful and are wonderful additions to
any library.
Proper editions of The Nursery “Alice” and Alice’s Adventures Under
Ground, however, are much harder to come by, but can occasionally be
discovered in quality used bookstores. Another good (but not excellent) book,
The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll, is of use, but it is far from
perfect, and misleading in its title. To my knowledge, The Complete Alice in
Wonderland you are now reading is the only work in existence which compiles,
supports and annotates all of the “Alice” stories in a single source.
With all that said, I have only one more e-text peeve to confide to you: that
of long introductions! And so, without further ado, I welcome you to The
Complete Alice in Wonderland. Enjoy your adventures alongside Alice, and do
remember:
“Of course you’re mad. Or else you wouldn’t have come here.”
Onward and downward, into Wonderland!
PART I
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Introduction: The Creation of Alice
By Kent David Kelly
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND is a beloved and ageless
classic. Indeed, it is one of the most popular, enduring and fondly-quoted books
in all the world. Its beginnings, however, were exceedingly humble. If not for the
stubborn insistence of a very intelligent and endearing little girl—one Alice
Pleasance Liddell—we would not possess this treasury of Victorian wit and
humor at all!
The story of Alice was first improvised as it was spoken, in 1862, by Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson (who we know today by his pen name, Lewis Carroll). One
summer day, Carroll was out on a boating jaunt with his good friend Robinson
Duckworth, and three “Liddell” girls: Lorina, Edith and Alice Pleasance.
On July 4, Carroll made the following entry in his diary:
“Duckworth and I made an expedition up the river to Godstow with the 3
Liddells: we had tea on the bank there, and did not reach Christ Church again till
1/2 past 8, when we took them on to my rooms to see my collection of micro-
photographs, and restored them to the Deanery [their home], just before 9.”
Robinson Duckworth’s own reminiscences of that fateful day were as
follows:
“I was very closely associated with him [Lewis Carroll] in the production
and publication of Alice in Wonderland. I rowed stroke and he rowed bow in the
famous Long Vacation voyage to Godstow, when the three Miss Liddells were
our passengers, and the story was actually composed and spoken over my
shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as ‘cox’ of our gig. I
remember turning round and saying, ‘Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of
yours?’ And he replied, ‘Yes, I’m inventing as we go along.’ I also well
remember how, when we had conducted the three children back to the Deanery,
Alice said, as she bade us good-night, ‘Oh, Mr. Dodgson, I wish you would write
out Alice’s adventures for me.’ He said he should try, and he afterwards told me
that he sat up nearly the whole night, committing to a MS. book his recollections
of the drolleries with which he had enlivened the afternoon. He added
illustrations of his own, and presented the volume, which used often to be seen
on the drawing-room table at the Deanery.”
In retrospect, Alice’s memories of those golden summer days may be the
most important of all. Later in life, she explained the secret of her stories in this
way:
“Most of Mr. Dodgson’s stories were told to us on river expeditions to
Nuneham or Godstow, near Oxford. My eldest sister, now Mrs. Skene, was
‘Prima,’ [Latin, roughly translated as ‘first daughter,’ or ‘eldest’] I was
‘Secunda,’ [‘second’] and ‘Tertia’ [‘third’] was my sister Edith. I believe the
beginning of Alice was told one summer afternoon when the sun was so burning
that we had landed in the meadows down [sic] the river, deserting the boat to
take refuge in the only bit of shade to be found, which was under a new-made
hayrick. Here from all three came the old petition of ‘tell us a story,’ and so
began the ever-delightful tale.
“Sometimes to tease us—and perhaps being really tired—Mr. Dodgson
would stop suddenly and say, ‘And that’s all till next time.’ ‘Ah, but it is next
time,’ would be the exclamation from all three; and after some persuasion the
story would start afresh.
“Another day, perhaps the story would begin in the boat, and Mr. Dodgson,
in the middle of telling a thrilling adventure, would pretend to go fast asleep, to
our great dismay.”
Carroll, we know now, was indeed growing weary of the endless storytelling,
as he wrote this aside in his diary on August 6, 1862: “... Had to go on with my
interminable fairytale of ‘Alice’s Adventures.’” We are fortunate that he did so,
and that Alice persisted in asking for more stories!
Surely, the tale would have died if Alice had not insisted on its immortality.
Captain Caryl Hargreaves (Alice’s son), sharing his mother’s memoirs with the
world in 1932, revealed the following additional secrets which bring us fuller
understanding:
“Nearly all of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground [the first draft of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland] was told on that blazing summer afternoon with the
heat haze shimmering over the meadows where the party landed to shelter for a
while in the shadow cast by the haycocks near Godstow. I [Alice] think the
stories he told us that afternoon must have been better than usual, because I have
such a distinct recollection of the expedition, and also, on the next day I started
to pester him to write down the story for me, which I had never done before. It
was due to my ‘going on, going on’ and importunity that, after saying he would
think about it, he eventually gave the hesitating promise which started him
writing it down at all.
It was only long after Carroll and Alice became famous—indeed, timeless
and unforgettable—that Carroll set forth his own full awareness of the
importance of those lost summer days. It is with his most heartfelt and revelatory
words that our understanding comes to its fulfillment:
“Many a day had we rowed together on that quiet stream—the three little
maidens and I—and many a fairy tale had been extemporised for their benefit—
whether it were at times when the narrator was ‘i’ the vein,’ and fancies unsought
came crowding thick upon him, or at times when the jaded Muse was goaded
into action, and plodded meekly on, more because she had to say something than
that she had something to say—yet none of these many tales got written down:
they lived and died, like summer midges, each in its own golden afternoon until
there came a day when, as it chanced, one of my little listeners petitioned that
the tale might be written out for her. That was many a year ago, but I distinctly
remember, now as I write, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new
line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin
with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards. And so, to please a
child I loved (I don’t remember any other motive), I printed in manuscript, and
illustrated with my own crude designs—designs that rebelled against every law
of Anatomy or Art (for I had never had a lesson in drawing)—the book which I
have just had published in facsimile. In writing it out, I added many fresh ideas,
which seemed to grow of themselves upon the original stock; and many more
added themselves when, years afterwards, I wrote it all over again for
publication: but (this may interest some readers of ‘Alice’ to know) every such
idea and nearly every word of the dialogue, came of itself. Sometimes an idea
comes at night, when I have had to get up and strike a light to note it down—
sometimes when out on a lonely winter walk, when I have had to stop, and with
half-frozen fingers jot down a few words which should keep the new-born idea
from perishing—but whenever or however it comes, it comes of itself. I cannot
set invention going like a clock, by any voluntary winding up: nor do I believe
that any original writing (and what other writing is worth preserving?) was ever
so produced. ... ‘Alice’ and the ‘Looking-Glass’ are made up almost wholly of
bits and scraps, single ideas which came of themselves. Poor they may have
been; but at least they were the best I had to offer ...”
“Stand forth, then, from the shadowy past, ‘Alice,’ the child of my dreams.
Full many a year has slipped away, since that ‘golden afternoon’ that gave thee
birth, but I can call it up almost as clearly as if it were yesterday—the cloudless
blue above, the watery mirror below, the boat drifting idly on its way, the tinkle
of the drops that fell from the oars, as they waved so sleepily to and fro, and (the
one bright gleam of life in all the slumberous scene) the three eager faces,