The Complete Stories and Poems of
LEWIS CARROLL
FTER lunch on July 4, 1862, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a thirty-year-old Oxfo athematics don and clergyman (later to become known as Lewis Carroll.) met d three daughters of the dean of his college, Christ Church, for a boating excursion up the river Isis. Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell begged for a story, and as he and a friend rowed the boat, Mr Dodgson invented another little girl named Alice who went straight down a rabbit-hole and soon changed children's literature forever. Today, Alice in Fonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, are classics with enormous and continuing appeal to children and adults alike, and Carroll's works are widely quoted and enmeshed in the popular culture not only of English-speaking countries but many others as well. In fact, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into over fifty-five languages, assuring that Carroll's indelible creations—the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, Humpty Dumpty, the White Knight, and Alice herself-all live lives of their own, now and for generations to come.
In addition to Alice in Wonderland, illustrated by the inspired John Tenniel, and Through the Looking-Glass, this collection includes all of Carroll's fiction and poetry:
"The Hunting of the Snark" is a subtly humorous and entertaining fantasy with philosophical depth, laced with social satire, and mathematical and logical paradoxes.
"Rhyme? And Reason?" contains humorous verse that is not as well known but is totally delightful.
"A Tangled Tale" displays Lewis Carroll's talents as mathematician and storyteller.
Comprised of ten "knots," each contains at least one mathematical problem or puzzle, with solutions following.
Sylvie and Bruno, and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, a continuous novel published in rwo books, is the work Carroll believed to be his best. Said to be the most ambitious literary undertaking of his career, the books are a long and complex combination of fairytale and social novel.
Three Sunsets and Other Poems are serious poems, composed late in the author's life, with recurrent themes of the loss of innocence and love.