The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (Lewis Carroll, edited by Martin Gardner)

A paperback edition, with Tenniel's original illustrations for the books. Neither Wonderland nor Looking-Glass (impossible not to think of them as a pair) ever palls on re-reading - one always forgets delightful little details somehow, like the suppression of the guinea pigs for cheering in court, or the way that the Messenger to the White King says that he will whisper his message, leans down to do so, and then instead shouts it into the king's ear - and this time there was the added enticement of being able to read Gardner's annotations, which add much to the magpie potpourri order (non)sense of the original texts, whether providing French and German translations of "Jabberwocky", listing possible answers to the riddle of why a raven is like a writing-desk, digressing to discuss the physics of the looking-glass world, being scathing about particular film adaptations, ruminating on Carroll's relationship with the 'real Alice' and with many others, or chasing any of hundreds of other rabbits down their figurative holes in shedding light on Carroll's words.