A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans four thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Laura Miller is the book's general editor. Co-founder of Salon.com, where she worked as an editor and writer for 20 years, she is currently a books and culture columnist at Slate. A journalist and a critic, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times Book Review, where she wrote the "Last Word" column for two years. She is the author of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia and editor of the Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors.

In postrevolutionary Russia, as the Soviet government was initiating a program of rapid industrialization, avant-garde artists declared their intent to serve the nascent state and to transform life in accordance with their aesthetic designs. In spite of their professed utilitarianism, however, most avant-gardists created works that can hardly be regarded as practical instruments of societal transformation. Exploring this paradox, Vaingurt claims that the artists’ investment of technology with aesthetics prevented their creations from being fully conscripted into the arsenal of political hegemony. The purposes of avant-garde technologies, she contends, are contemplative rather than constructive. Looking at Meyerhold’s theater, Tatlin’s and Khlebnikov’s architectural designs, Mayakovsky’s writings, and other works from the period, Vaingurt offers an innovative reading of an exceptionally complex moment in the formation of Soviet culture.

A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. Please note that the ebook does not contain images. Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans two thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Laura Miller is the book's general editor. Co-founder of Salon.com, where she worked as an editor and writer for 20 years, she is currently a books and culture columnist at Slate. A journalist and a critic, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times Book Review, where she wrote the "Last Word" column for two years. She is the author of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia and editor of the Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors.

Imaginary worlds have captivated readers since the first works of literature. Lovingly researched and beautifully produced, Literary Wonderlands explores the timeless , captivating features of literature's greatest fictional worlds and the minds that created them. The book is comprised of nearly 100 sections, each of which details the plot of a famous fantasy world, the historical circumstances that surrounded its production , the author's inspiration, and the place it holds in the public imagination. Roaming from classic tales including C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials , t his truly global collection chronicles over two thousand years of literary creation. Accompanied by stunning visuals that elucidate the production of each wor k, Literary Wonderlands is a n enchanting read for anyone who has ever been transported to another place through the power of the written word

Alice in Wonderland (also known as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), from 1865, is the peculiar and imaginative tale of a girl who falls down a rabbit-hole into a bizarre world of eccentric and unusual creatures. Lewis Carroll's prominent example of the genre of "literary nonsense" has endured in popularity with its clever way of playing with logic and a narrative structure that has influence generations of fiction writing.

In this volume, Jan Susina examines the importance of Lewis Carroll and his popular Alice books to the field of children’s literature. From a study of Carroll’s juvenilia to contemporary multimedia adaptations of Wonderland, Susina shows how the Alice books fit into the tradition of literary fairy tales and continue to influence children’s writers. In addition to examining Carroll’s books for children, these essays also explore his photographs of children, his letters to children, his ill-fated attempt to write for a dual audience of children and adults, and his lasting contributions to publishing. The book addresses the important, but overlooked facet of Carroll’s career as an astute entrepreneur who carefully developed an extensive Alice industry of books and non-book items based on the success of Wonderland, while rigorously defending his reputation as the originator of his distinctive style of children’s stories.

Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The English-Language Editions of the Four Alice Books Published Worldwide is a two-volume set; this is Volume 1 (Essays and Illustrations). Volume 2 (Checklists and Appendices) is available separately. This is a companion to the 2015 three-volume Alice in a World of Wonderlands: Translations of Lewis Carroll's Masterpiece. Jon A. Lindseth and Arnold Hirshon edited these volumes that explore the legacy of the four Alice books: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, Alice's Adventures under Ground, and The Nursery "Alice." Volume 1 contains essays by distinguished scholars about both the publishing history of the four books (by Francine F. Abeles, Mark Burstein, George Cassady, Morton N. Cohen, Martin Gardner, Selwyn Goodacre, Edward Guiliano, August A. Imholtz, Jr., Stephanie Lovett, Heather Simmons, and Daniel Rover Singer) and about the history of their many illustrated editions (by Mark Burstein, George Cassady, Michael Everson, and Arnold Hirshon). Volume 2, available separately, contains ten checklists of the four books documenting the chronological and geographic history of their publication in the United Kingdom, the United States, other English-language countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand), and 29 countries in the rest of the world. This volume also contains short discussions about publication and illustration trends since the first published edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, as well as publisher and illustrator indexes to all of the checklist entries.