Favourite. ( )

Alice's adventures are beyond odd, delightfully surreal and yet totally believable, and strangely discomfiting. I'll admit: I'm always a bit scared for Alice and the others in the two main stories. Animals get unreasonably angry and threaten violence. Alice's growth and shrinking is sometimes really dangerous. The whole thing is discombobulating. Big. Small. Angry. Silly. Nonsensical. But Alice, young Alice, maintains her cool. Or doesn't. And nearly drowns. I'm so strangely weirded out. *shudder*

_Through the Looking Glass_ really takes the surreal further. The focus is more on the slightly less differentiated and interesting chess pieces ... queens and kings and knights. They're not nearly as interesting as the animals from the first book.

I dipped a little into _Sylvia and Bruno_ here, but it didn't grab me, so I'm moving on. ( )

Presented in this volume are a collection of stories, poems, and puzzles by Lewis Carroll. It features Carroll's classics, such as Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as well as the unforgettable The Hunting of the Snark. Included here too are the Sylvie and Bruno tales, Alice's Adventures Underground, several arithmetic puzzles (ranging from easy to hard, including one whose solution requires equivocation), as well as a bounty of entertaining poems all exhibiting Carroll's wit and wisdom.

This book is sure to be a cherished addition to any library favoring the works of Carroll. ( )

As a kid, I had a copy of Carrol's works that had no pictures, and I STILL loved it! The eight selections in this book, and the date when they were first published (when known): 1 - Alice in Wonderland (1865); 2. - Through the Looking Glass (1896); 3 - Sylvia and Bruno (1889); 4 - Sylvia and Bruno Concluded (1893); 5 - A Tangled Tale; 6 - The Hunting of the Snark (1876); 7 - Phantasmagoria and Other Poems; 8 - Three Sunsets and Other Poems. ( )

One of my favorite books!

Alice's adventures in wonderland: just delicious, arouses the fantasy of big children :) ( )

Alexander Woolcott, introduction, John Tenniel, illustrations

I will not venture to comment on Alice as myriads of better minds than mine have already done so. Except of course to acknowledge and delight in the work of genius that it is.
I assumed that all of Carroll's works would be on the same level as "Alice." I have been stunned to find, in the Sylvie and Bruno section of this, that Carroll could and did write dreadful Victorian dreck. Saccharine, schmaltzy, bathetic pathos. Deliberate icky children's vocabularly - the repeated use of "oo" for you and "welly" for very.
Stock characters and images - the lovely innocent little girl who is entirely self-sacrificing, the mischievous little boy who is being taught to be a man...
I was appalled at insipidity of this sort from the Alice author.
However, of much interest are his most definitive opinions about social issues which he incorporates shamelessly into these "children's stories." He disapproves of hunting, for instance.
Also, he has quite strong opinions about what true Christianity is, and puts these in too. He discusses Jesus quite naturally and has his characters not only quote the Bible but discuss scriptural and spiritual questions.
After "Slyvie and Bruno" came "Letters to Child Friends." I did not care for these very much either.
Heavy-handed attempts at humor, and, it appears, little comprehension of the fears one can evoke in children. They rather reminded me of those unpleasant occasions in public places when you hear parents or caretakers saying awful things to children.
I have learned that "Slyvie and Bruno" was one of the last things he published, so I am not certain why it appears where it does in the book.
"The Hunting of the Snark" is delightful. He struck on just the right combination of rhythm, rhyme and subject, and the nonsense aspect is very well done. I loved the 10 characters all beginning with "B", and their various subplots. And I can see how a number of phrases from this unusual work have entered the lexicon.

Ok, so I haven't had time to read the entire book yet, but I read all the Alice stories (unabridged) when I was a teen, and this book is quite the treasure. In addition to the Alice stories you would expect, this edition includes funny little word puzzles and such that I found wonderful. If you have only read Alice, you have missed half the man's genius! ( )

Everything written as Lewis Carroll-his poetry and stories, complete with the Tenniel illustrations (my favorite is of the Gryphon sleeping). ( )

Wonderful ( )

I found this volume in a used book shop (McIntyre & Moore, how I love thee...) There is nothing particularly amazing about the edition- it does not have the definitive annotation of the Annotated Alice, certainly. It does, however, have EVERYTHING. Anagrams, poems, puzzles, published letters, both Alice stories, and Sylvie and Bruno. For that alone, any Carroll-phile would love it. ( )

This is a complete collection of Lewis Carroll's works- Alice, Snipe, poems, everything. The paper is a little thin, and the type is small, but it's nice to have everything together. ( )

This book is the most complete set of works I've seen by Lewis Carroll. It's an essential addition to anyone who wants to do any literary research, but also a nice source for anyone wanting to read the whole and not just the parts of the works presented under the name Lewis Carroll.

It includes all the well known works (hunting of the snark, through the looking glass, etc.) but also two large works that are much harder to find in any other format: "Silvie and Bruno" and "Silvie and Bruno Concluded".

These two Silvie and Bruno works were both written later in life than his better known works. The inclusion of a male child character as well as a female child character along with a first person adult narrator is a big difference from his other well known work.

Bruno talks baby talk throughout ("oo" instead of "you", etc.) which can be a bit annoying, but he does seem to have captured this very young child’s phrasing. It all reads as though they were dictations of afternoons spent with two children; all of the adventures and misadventures in their mutual play world.

While this is the unadulterated works, the full depth of most of it can best be understood by going to the "Annotated" books by Martin Gardner, the author of many pop mathematics books. He explains some of the inside jokes that were meant for the kids of the era, but also points out the mathematics that Dodgson (Carroll was a pseudonym) the mathematics professor snuck in throughout.

"The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, with an introduction by Alexander Woollcott and the illustrations by John Tenniel.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
Sylvie and Bruno
Sylvie and Bruno concluded
Hunting of the Snark
Early Verse
Puzzles from Wonderland
Prologues to Plays
Phantasmagoria
College rhymes and notes by an Oxford Chiel
Acrostics, Inscriptions and other verse
Three sunsets and other poems
Stories
A Miscellany"

This large volume includes 8 books: the 2 Alice books, Sylvie and Bruno 1 and 2, A Tangled Tale, the Hunting of the Snark, Phantasmagoria & other poems, Three Sunsets and other poems. A nice reference but not convenient for casual reading, or for children. ( )