Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
- Tells the story of Alice, who falls down a rabbit hole and ends up in a peculiar land with anthropomorphic creatures.
- Part of the literary nonsense* genre
- First UK printing 1865. This edition was suppressed by its illustrator, John Tenniel, due to his dissatisfaction with print quality.
- First US printing also 1865
- Second UK edition printed 1866.
- Among its first readers were Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria
- In general AiW received very poor reviews and did not gain popularity until the end of the 19th century.
- Now it has extreme popularity with adults and children.
- AiW has been translated to 125 languages
- It has never been out of print.
* Explore further
First book of the blog is…
Why? Well, because 2 of my best friends consider it a crime against humanity that I’ve not read it yet. And also the time period and history of Lewis Carroll/Alice Liddell is fascinating to me. I look forward to exploring everything.
Learn more about commonplace books
Some of the most noted scholars and historical figures of our time have kept commonplace books, such as Thomas Jefferson, W.H. Auden, H.P. Lovecraft, Abraham Lincoln, and many others.
Start here at the Wikipedia article for an overview of commonplace books.
For further information, and how-to’s on starting your own commonplace book, follow these links:
So what’s all this about, then?
Just some questions I figure might crop up from anyone who might decide to follow this tumblr.
- Who the heck are you? Hi, I’m Carrie. I like to read. I recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English literature, so I figure while I’m not working in that field and waiting to be able to complete my Master’s, I’d do something to keep the literary mind awake. Hence, this tumblr.
- What’s a commonplace book? Wikipedia (Yes, I know, but for the sake of overview) defines a commonplace book as: “a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books.” So if you have a book that has notes in the margin, you’ve got a commonplace book of sorts. Scholars have expanded on it to include: “any manuscript that collects material along a common theme by an individual.”
- So it’s a scrapbook? Sort of, and not really. Basically what this is going to be is my catalog of books I’m reading, plus important quotes, dates, bits of information, pictures, anything relevant to the current book.
- So it’s a book review blog? Nope. While I’ll probably of course offer my opinions of the book after I’ve completed it, that’s not the focus of this blog. My focus is to learn.
- Do you take book recommendations? Yes. But it’s not a book advertisement blog either, so bear that in mind. :)
I’ll add more questions as they arise. If they arise, who knows, the only one interested in this is probably me :P
