The eNotated Alice in Wonderland

Though most ebooks are simple conversions of paper books, "The eNotated Alice in Wonderland" is a completely new approach that takes advantage of ebook technology by providing comprehensive eNotations (electronic annotations), essays, and background information conveniently accessible through links and a active table of contents. Written by Pam Sowers, researcher, journalist, and long-time “Alice” fan, this background biographical, historical, and interpretive information reveals an “Alice” not visible to most readers.


Says Sowers, “This book is for adults as well as children.  ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is not simply a sweet children’s story set in dreamland.  It is much more complex.  Themes include death, racism, politics, anger, confusion, logic and women’s roles.  Carroll wrote in a world controlled by Victorian sensibilities.” 


One hundred fifty years ago, Charles Dodgson, joined a party boating from Oxford to Godstow that included three little girls, Alice Liddell and her sisters. In charge of entertainment, Dodgson told the girls a story that with Alice’s encouragement became “Alice in Wonderland,” published three years later under the pen name Lewis Carroll.


Immediately popular and published in hundreds of variously illustrated editions reaching millions of readers over generations, “Alice” has over time become less accessible than it was to Carroll’s Victorian contemporaries. Sowers’s eNotations supply the tacit background Alice knew but we don’t, revealing the humor, insight, and fun of this many-layered complex book.


This eNotated Classics sesquicentennial edition of “Alice” contains more than 90 illustrations, most in color, from the most beloved editions of Alice as well as more than 360 eNotations, an introduction, two fascinating essays, an extensive bibliography, and a chronology showing where Carroll and “Alice” fit in their times.


If you read Alice as a child, you’ll be amazed on reading the eNotated edition how much you missed and can now appreciate. If you value reading to your child, this eNotated edition, with it’s illustrations and eNotations, can provide opportunities for going beyond Carroll’s words - to discuss children’s lives in Victorian England, what pun’s are, and how logic functions, how dreams differ from daily life and other topics that can engage your child - not just in Carroll’s words but the meanings that lie behind them.