Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Collins Classics

"What is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures?"
For over 125 years John Tenniel's superb illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland have been the perfect complement to Lewis Carroll's timeless story. In that time Alice has been illustrated by numerous artists, but not one has come close to matching the universal appeal of the original pictures.
This is the first Alice to reproduce Ternniel's exquisite drawings from prints taken directly from the original wood engravings. Here, Tenniel's fine line work is far crisper, delicate shadings are reproduced with more subtlety, and details never seen before are now visible.
Like most nineteenth-century children's books, the pictures for Alice were created by transferring the artist's drawings to woodblocks, But with Alice, the original blocks served as masters from which metal plates were made for printing. Unfortunately, these plates deteriorated from the repeated pressure applied during printing, and over time, many of the fine lines in Tenniel's pictures simply vanished altogether.As the year-, passed, the original woodblocks disappeared and were believed lost; then, in 1985 they were discovered in a London bank vault.
Now, for the first time, prints from these woodblocks have been used to produce a deluxe gift edition with clearer, more detailed images than have ever been seen before. At last, readers can see the Alice that Carroll and Tenniel had originally envisioned.

 • "Without these two books in my childhood I doubt whether my imagination would have developed at all." --Kate Atkinson
"Only Lewis Carroll has shown us the world upside down the way a child sees it, and has made us laugh as children laugh" -- Virginia Woolf "Precise, dream-like, subversive" -- Quentin Blake Independent on Sunday "The clue to the enduring fascination and greatness of the Alice books lies in language... It is play, and word-play, and its endless intriguing puzzles continue to reveal themselves long after we have ceased to be children" -- A. S. Byatt "Without these two books in my childhood I doubt whether my imagination would have developed at all" -- Kate Atkinson "So what makes these different to any other set of classics? In a moment of inspiration Random House had the bright idea of actually asking Key stage 2 children what extra ingredients they could add to make children want to read. And does it work? Well, put it this way...my 13-year-old daughter announced that she had to read a book over the summer holiday and, without any prompting, spotted The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...and proceeded to read it! Now, if you knew my 13-year-old daughter, you would realise that this is quite remarkable. She reads texts, blogs and tags by the thousand - but this is the first book she has read since going to high school, so all hail Vintage Classics!" National Association for the Teaching of English

"Only Lewis Carroll has shown us the world upside down the way a child sees it, and has made us laugh as children laugh." --Virginia Woolf

Chapter - 1: Down the Rabbit-Hole Chapter - 2: The Pool of Tears Chapter - 3: A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale Chapter - 4: The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill Chapter - 5: Advice from a Caterpillar Chapter - 6: Pig and Pepper Chapter - 7: A Mad Tea-Party Chapter - 8: The Queen's Croquet-Ground Chapter - 9: The Mock Turtle's Story Chapter - 10: The Lobster-Quadrille Chapter - 11: Who Stole the Tarts? Chapter - 12: Alice's Evidence