I'd like to get a nice illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland...any suggestions?

[IdrisTheDragon]

Since DD was born 18 months ago, I've been vaguely looking for a copy of Alice in Wonderland for her. I've seen various ones but none has really taken my fancy.

Any ideas?

Twiglett recommended one the other day on this thread - don't know if it's the kind of thing you're looking for.

Not sure if it is what you are after either but I have a copy of Alice in Wonderland that I got as a child, it is a hardbacked copy from M&S, the illustrations are lovely. I came across it the other day and DS1 is not reading and loving it. Might be worth having a look on e-Bay?

Thank you (and why is it that even when I think I've managed to search the archives and not find what I want, the same thing has been posted a few days before ).

I don't think you can improve on the original Tenniel illustrations, myself. If you want a kind of heirloom copy I would buy the nicest edition of The Annotated Alice that you can find (the one I've linked to has a nasty cover but you can find a nice old copy somewhere). This will do very nicely as a special book for reading aloud, and be a source of information and amusement through to adulthood. It isn't really a book for young children, IMO, so choose something that will last.

That cover is um interesting .

Not intending to read it to DD just yet, but given her name, she has to have a copy of Alice in Wonderland some time (in fact I'm surprised she hasn't been given one yet).

An alternative to the Tenniel illustrations are the ones by Helen Oxenbury - see here

I think I am probably more a Tenniel than Helen Oxenbury type - have looked at an Oxenbury illustrated one and it didn't quite do it for me.

Yes, I couldn't quite decide about the Oxenbury version myself.

I've just discovered the search inside bit of Amazon...

Buy her a first edition of the Annotated one; it is a glorious book and will appreciate in value

in what sense is it annotated? [dense]

It has enormous great screeds of explanation of just about everything, written in a very erudite and amusing fashion

all the satirical bits are explained, the word plays and the logic puzzles, and it is just generally fabulous

it is all done via teeny teeny little footnotes at each side of the text (oh, probably not footnotes then, but YSWIM) so that you can just read it like an ordinary edition and then dip into the notes when you feel like it

it is beautiful, one of my favourite books

I have a lovely little box set of AIW & TTLG with Mervyn Peake's illustrations. Bloomsbury reissued it in 2000 I think. Originally from the 1940s.

Maybe more of an adults edition though and I've just looked it up on Amazon and it only seems to be available secondhand which is a shame.

You can just see the covers here but the illustrations are really lovely and I think I actually prefer them to Tenniel.

I was wrong. You can get it new .