Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Penguin Books)

Collecting Alice's complete adventures, a source of delight to children and adults alike for generations, the "Penguin Classics" edition of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" is edited with an introduction and notes aby Hugh Haughton.

Conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Carroll's college, the dream worlds of nonsensical Wonderland and back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom depict order turned upside-down.

Following the white rabbit into his warren, Alice falls into a world where croquet is played with hedgehogs and flamingos, a baby turns into a pig, time runs amok at a the Mad Hatter's tea-party, a chaotic game of chess makes Alice a Queen and the Mock Turtle and Gryphon dance the Lobster Quadrille.

But amongst the anarchic humour and sparkling wordplay, unforgettable characters, puzzles and riddles, are poignant moments of nostalgia for a lost childhood. Original and experimental, adapted into countless film and television versions as "Alice in Wonderland", the Alice books give readers a window on both child and adult worlds.This is the most comprehensively annotated edition available and includes the manuscript version of "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" and Carroll's 1887 essay '"Alice" on the stage'.

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) was the pen-name of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, Carroll was appointed lecturer in mathematics in 1855, where he spent the rest of his life.

In 1861 he took deacon's orders, but shyness and a constitutional stammer prevented him from seeking the priesthood. If you enjoyed "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" you might like Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", also available in "Penguin Classics".

"A work of glorious intelligence and literary devices...nonsense becomes a form of higher sense". (Malcolm Bradbury).