Soso
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Though this book is not much better than Alice's Adventures, the chess motif and theme does make the book much more interesting. With the bossy, dominant Red Queen and the quiet, kind, messy white queen, the book is a study in contrasts.
The interweaving of the Nursery Rhyme Characters and the frequent fish poetry references does provide more continuity and a sense of sequential events than Alice's first adventure. I also appreciated the linking of the cat at the beginning and end of the story.
It does still feel like Carroll did way too many opium pipes in his time.
(First written as Journal Reading Notes in 1999.)
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The Authoritative Full-Coloured Presentation by Carroll's Own Publisher
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I have said it all before for the companion "Wonderland" volume, but I'll paste it here again.
Among the countless editions of Carroll's classics to have come out over the years, I don't think any beats Macmillan's. Generally speaking, Carroll's own publisher seems to take much pride in being the originator of this masterpiece and have always presented the book in the most faithful manners to Carroll's and Tenniel's original visions. With the advent of a new age in publishings everything is required to jump out at the progressively wanting in concentration youngsters with really rather explosive brilliancy and exuberance. So here Macmillan has at last commissioned the remainders of Tenniel's illustrations not coloured by Theaker to be coloured in a complementary hand. The result is an all-new sparkling edition, larger than any they have previously published and quite decidedly more sparkling. Incidentally, the demand of full-coloured illustrations in-and-amongst the text has, coincidentally enough, reverted the book to its original sumptuous quality paper unseen for years. This with Macmillan's laudable continued commitment to offer the world the book in as close an appearance to what Carroll intended as possible - with great intregrity in the typeset and positioning of the text and illustrations - ultimately created a highly collectable edition. In the reissued papaerback edition of this one, Philip Pullman commends the colouring of the illustrations fro having defied his apprehension in such a tampering with what work perfectly in black-and-white. It does not little of its eccentric, Victorian charms, but still delights admirers of the original notwithstanding.
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A Classic work in a beautiful new edition, a joy to own.
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This beatifully produced little book contains Lewis Carroll's classic work of inverted logic (or nonsense ) which needs no comment from me. The drawings by Mervyn Peake are a lot darker in nature than the more familiar ones by Tenniel, but if you enjoyed Gormenghast you will find them very much to your taste.
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