Alice's Adventures Under Ground: The Story That Became Alice in Wonderland

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful facsimile
Review: Alice's Adventures were stories created on the spot and told by Charles Dodgson to his young female friends, including most particularly little Alice Liddell. After begging from Alice that these stories be written in a book, Charles Dodgson wrote a draft, and from this carefully handwrote and illustrated "Alice's Adventures Under Ground", which he gave to Alice Liddell. Later, Charles used his draft to rewrite the stories in a much expanded version which was published by Macmillan as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", and then went on to write "Through the Looking-Glass". "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" is a facsimile edition of the handwritten and hand illustrated manuscript, which now resides in the British Museum. There have been previous facsimile editions published, such as from Macmillan and Dover, but in black and white only. This color facsimile is extremely well done: the quality of the thick yellow paper is excellent, as is the brown printing. These, along with the color reproduction of the cover and attribution pages, combine to provide a great looking book that feels so wonderful to handle. And of course the story itself is marvelously enjoyable, and many of the same episodes which became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland can be seen in this precursor to that work.