Lewis Carroll's annotator
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 08:06AM While teaching Alice's Adventures in Wonderland this week in ENG 370: History of Children's Literature, I am 
Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (Norton, 1999)encouraging the students to read an interview I did with Martin Gardner (link is to .pdf). Gardner is, in many ways, a modern twin to Lewis Carroll. He's a mathematician, puzzle-maker as well as a story teller and magician. The interview that I wrote for Five Owls, a periodical on children's literature, focused on Gardner's classic books: The Annotated Alice, More Annotated Alice, and Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition.
In the interview, Gardner revealed that he didn't initially like the Alice books because when he was young he found them scary. When he was in his 20s and a mathematician, he picked up Alice's Adventures because he was familiar with Carroll as a mathematician. Curiously, Gardner, like Carroll, also became famous for writing puzzles and math games for children. Gardner also wrote a famous, long-running column for Scientific American and is the author of more than 70 books, including some fantasies for children. And was a genuinely nice person to interview.
Added March 2: Entertainment Weekly as a piece about Alice references in Lost.
Reader Comments (2)
Did you see Lost this week? Jack picks up his teenage son's (who knew?) copy of the Annotated Alice, starts to reminisce about how much they loved it when they read it together in the old days, while the headphone wearing teen storms out of the room to grab a soft drink from the fridge. Reminded me of this post, and the Louden Wainright song "A Father and a Son" all at the same time
Thanks for the post Jeff. I haven't seen that episode yet. But I'm glad that Lost is referring to a great edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. If you want lots of details about Lewis Carroll and the Alice books, Martin Gardner's Definitive Alice is the place to start. I have caught on to the references in Lost to Locke and Rousseau. And glad you like Loudon Wainwright, too!