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Adventures in finding Alice's Adventures

Herbie's picture

Due to an unfortunate mishap with grammar, I felt I could order only a very specific edition of Alice's adventures, but that edition was unfortunately sold out (possibly purchased by all of us?) until yesterday when Amazon finally shipped it.  However, the late shipping meant it would not arrive in time for me to read it for class tomorrow.  Alas, the only copies still available at the library were at Swarthmore, which again would not have arrived on time.  Fortunately, Lewis Carroll wrote his books so long ago that they're all in the public domain and available on Google Books.

Though it is not the edition I purchased, through my hard-copy mishaps, I did get to read an interesting version from 1898.  It contained what I believe are original illustrations, and the font was quite large, especially on my laptop's monitor.  However, what interested me most were the advertisements at the end!  The volume contained ads for about 8 other works, all published by the same publisher.  What was interesting about those advertisements, however, was that each one advertised a different kind of book about nature and related activities.  There were overlaps, but they covered plants in different climates and regions, gardening, bird-watching, fishing, and other larger animals. 

To me, this meant that the publisher believed that Alice in Wonderland is best placed in a genre about nature, plants, and animals.  Of all of the genres Alice could fit into, it was interesting to see which one the publisher believed fit best.