Rating: 
Summary: A classic!
Review: If you ever wanted to know about the subtleties of the Alice stories this is the book for you. In his usual no nonsense style Gardner lays out well researched clearly articulated annotations to Carrol's intricate and sometimes mysterious writing.
Rating:
Summary: Strickly for real Carroll fans
Review: In the case of Alice, we are dealing with a very curious, complicated form of nonsense, which explores the possibilities of the uses and abuse of language and is actually based on a profound knowledge of the rules of logic. In fact, most of Carroll's apercus and all his joked are inversions of the rules of logic or plays on words. Reason is here in service to imagination and not vice-versa. The wealth of material which Carroll presents for the illumination of his philosophy is almost without end. The more I read Alice, the more I realize the books are dense enough to defy complete exegesis. Carroll's genius lies in the ability to disguise charmingly the seriousness of his concerns and to make the most playful quality of his work at the same time its didactic crux. This annotation version helps by telling us about some aspects of the era and setting that Alice and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson lived in, about Christ Church, and Duckworth etc. but it misses the details about the main points of logic that are being made by Carroll. So far I haven't found a satisfactory text that does that. Perhaps I will have to write one myself.
Rating:
Summary: Alice for Adults and other Thinking People
Review: Martin Gardner has amassed an incredible amount of information about a book that amused or bemused many of us while we were growing up. Many sections of Alice have proved mysterious and confusing to the young: Gardner reveals everything from the original poems which are parodied in the songs, the identities of certain historic figures hidden behind the masks of the Wonderland and Looking Glass crowd (including a portrait of the ugliest noblewoman who ever lived -- a clear model for the Dutchess), and many other fascinating digressions on the text.
Rating:
Summary: Alice for Adults and other Thinking People
Review: Martin Gardner has amassed an incredible amount of information about a book that amused or bemused many of us while we were growing up. Many sections of Alice have proved mysterious and confusing to the young: Gardner reveals everything from the original poems which are parodied in the songs, the identities of certain historic figures hidden behind the masks of the Wonderland and Looking Glass crowd (including a portrait of the ugliest noblewoman who ever lived -- a clear model for the Dutchess), and many other fascinating digressions on the text.
Rating:
Summary: Can't be too definitive
Review: Not knowing what you do not know it tells you everything. This book appears to be stand alone logic and fun on the surface. Some may even think it is a children's book. If so why all the courses and scholarly writings on the story?
Some things are self evident as being so short that you can touch your toes. Others may take some time as the reason hatters are mad is the process includes mercury so even if it was directed at a particular person or not hatters are mad. Still when was the last time you used a bathing machine? Knowing some of information can enhance the enjoyment of reading the story.
You get the original illustrations to boot. So when you are finished perusing this book it can be used as a coffee table conversation book.
Rating: 
Summary: Master of Nonsense
Review: The Annotated Alice provides a treasure chest of information on the two Alice books and on the man, Lewis Carroll who was responsible for their creation.Martin Gardner provides annotations throughout the texts of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Gardner's annotations help explain the inside jokes and mathematical and linguistic puzzles that fill the stories. Reading the Alice books as an adult is quite a different experience than it was as a child. The books' complexity really stands out on a careful reading. In fact, what are generally regarded as children's stories can be amazingly frustrating to read due to the complexity of the language and the almost constant stream of puns that are sometimes lost on modern audiences. One must remember that the stories are told purely for fun. Unlike other Victorian children's literature one gets no morals, plot development, or character development here. Alice is a yound child who stays a young child throughout her adventures. She neither matures or learns anything from her adventures. This is a very nice volume in its own right. It contains complete authoritative texts of both books and includes the supressed episode "The Wasp in the Wig." The original Tenniel illustrations are crisp and clear. The only difficulty is that the annotations are placed on the same page as the text in a small column that sometimes supplies more information than the text itself. The annotations themselves range from the definitional to the clearly eccentric. One can read all of them or only the ones that he or she is interested in. On the whole this is an excellent volume well worth the effort to read if one has any interest in the world of nonsense literature.
Rating:
Summary: A treasure within a treasure
Review: The original Alice was and is of course an undisputed classic of both children's and English literature in general. What more can one say about Alice?
On the other hand, while growing up, I never connected with Alice all that much. Of course I was acquainted with the stories, but Alice was never for me a beloved favorite. But one thing I have always loved personally (and even more as an adult) is WORDPLAY. Martin Gardner helpfully providing the original versions of the poems and recitations (which every Victorian schoolchild no doubt knew very well, but are less well known today!), plus his remarks about historical contexts of things, shows you just HOW clever Carroll was really being. Of course Alice can stand on its own and always has, but having Gardner's thorough and extensive commentary to help you know where all the jokes really are lets you enjoy it on a new and deeper level. (As has been pointed out, far from being the occasional little footnote, Gardner's commentary occupies just about as much space in the book as the original text does!)
Just for one example, I am still amazed whenever I open this book and see in the commentary the reproduced portrait of the actual historical figure who was the inspiration, visually if nothing else, for The Duchess. (A noble lady whose nickname, if I recall correctly, was "Old Pocket-Mouth" and was said to be the ugliest woman in history. If anything, Tenniel toned her down a bit for his character drawing!)
Anyway, summing up my comments on the commentary, Gardner's insights have in a real way brought me around to Alice, and that all the more joyfully for my being a bit late to the tea party.
Now, this edition finally combines and concatenates the commentaries from The Annotated Alice and More Annotated Alice, so that they are all conveniently in one place. This is really the ideal presentation I think. The only thing that is lost by this confluence is that, in the original More Annotated Alice, Gardner took the opportunity of a second volume to use illustrations from another historical Alice artist. In this combined edition, they stuck exclusively with the well-known illustrations of Tenniel.
And, if you still needed any other purchase justification, The Definitive Edition is a very beautiful book, a very nicely bound hardcover with a handsome gold-embossed jacket. Definitive Alice was one of the nicest holiday gifts I have ever received (when my cousin and her husband selected it from my Amazon Wish List a few Decembers ago, to my surprise and delight) and I still treasure it.
Rating:
Summary: Earlier reviewer has it wrong
Review: The so-called "Alice's Adventures Underground" was what "Alice in Wonderland" was initially called. The author of the "Annotated Alice" therefore does, in fact, deal with the two Alice books that exist.
Rating:
Summary: scholarly Jabberwocky
Review: The title of this book says it all--more annotations than a Richard Posner book, and as definitive an edition as one can expect. It is a bit peculiar to imagine a simple children's story dissected to pieces, but the researchers and editors behind this volume from Norton (purveyors of some of the best academic editions) bring new light to the hidden humor and brilliance behind Lewis Carroll's works. Featuring original artwork from the first edition, as well as some abandoned passages, you will not find a more complete version of Carroll's Alice tales anywhere else. A must-have for the children's lit bookshelf in your home library.
Rating:
Summary: scholarly Jabberwocky
Review: The title of this book says it all--more annotations than a Richard Posner book, and as definitive an edition as one can expect. It is a bit peculiar to imagine a simple children's story dissected to pieces, but the researchers and editors behind this volume from Norton (purveyors of some of the best academic editions) bring new light to the hidden humor and brilliance behind Lewis Carroll's works. Featuring original artwork from the first edition, as well as some abandoned passages, you will not find a more complete version of Carroll's Alice tales anywhere else. A must-have for the children's lit bookshelf in your home library.
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