“There’s no sort of use in knocking,” said the footman A. E. Jackson Selected and Edited by Jeff A. Menges With an Introduction by Mark Burstein Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, New York Copyright Copyright © 2012 by Dover Publications, Inc. Text copyright © 2012 by Jeff A. Menges Introduction © 2012 by Mark Burstein Barry Moser’s artwork from Through the Looking Glass, Pennyroyal Press (trade edition University of California Press), 1983. Copyright © Barry Moser. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Bibliographical Note Alice Illustrated: 120 Images from the Classic Tales of Lewis Carroll, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2012, is an original compilation of images from the following sources: John Tenniel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan and Co., London, 1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (Macmillan and Co., London, 1872); Peter Newel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1901); Arthur Rackham, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (William Heinemann, London, 1907); Charles Robinson, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Cassell & Co., Ltd., London, 1907); Millicent Sowerby, Alice in Wonderland (Chatto & Windus, London, 1907); W. H. Walker, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (John Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd., London, 1907); Harry Rountree, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Collins’ Clear Type Press, London, 1908); Mabel Lucie Attwell, Alice in Wonderland (Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., London, 1910); George Soper, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1910); A. E. Jackson, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Henry Frowde: Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1914); Margaret Tarrant, Alice in Wonderland (Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, London and Melbourne, 1916); Milo Winter, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Rand McNally & Company, Chicago and New York, 1916); Charles Folkard, Songs from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (A. & C. Black, Ltd., London, 1921); Gwynedd Hudson, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., London, 1922); Willy Pogány, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (E. P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1929); Barry Moser, Through the Looking-Glass (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983). An Introduction has been written by Mark Burstein specially for this edition. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alice illustrated: 120 images from the classic tales of Lewis Carroll / selected and edited by Jeff A. Menges ; with an introduction by Mark Burstein. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-486-48204-0 (pbk.) ISBN 0-486-48204-9 1. Carroll, Lewis, 1832–1898. Through the looking-glass—Illustrations. 2. Carroll, Lewis, 1832– 1898. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland—Illustrations. I. Menges, Jeff A., editor of compilation. II. Burstein, Mark, 1950–writer of added commentary. PR4611.A73A45 2012 741.6'4—dc23 2011047022 Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation 48204901 www.doverpublications.com Contents I NTRODUCTION Mark Burstein N I OTES ON THE LLUSTRATIONS Jeff A. Menges T P HE LATES Sir John Tenniel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Macmillan and Co., London, 1865 and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There Macmillan and Co., London, 1872 Peter Newel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Harper & Brothers, New York, 1901 Arthur Rackham Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Willian Heinemann, London, 1907 Charles Robinson Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Cassell & Co., Ltd., London, 1907 Millicent Sowerby Alice in Wonderland Chatto & Windus, London, 1907 W. H. Walker Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland John Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd., London, 1907 Harry Rountree Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Collins’ Clear Type Press, London, 1908 Mabel Lucie Attwell Alice in Wonderland Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., London, 1910 George Soper Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1910 A. E. Jackson Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Henry Frowde: Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1914 Margaret Tarrant Alice in Wonderland Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, London and Melbourne, 1916 Milo Winter Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass Rand McNally & Company, Chicago and New York, 1916 Charles Folkard Songs from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass A. & C. Black, Ltd., London, 1921 Gwynedd Hudson Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., London, 1922 Willy Pogány Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland E. P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1929 Barry Moser Through the Looking Glass University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1983 FRONT MATTER ILLUSTRATIONS Title page: Harry Rountree Contents: Charles Robinson Introduction: Margaret Tarrant Page ix: Arthur Rackham Page x: Charles Robinson The Plates: Millicent Sowerby Tailpiece: Barry Moser Introduction I t is one of literature’s greatest paradoxes that a book whose author and original illustrator complemented each other with such divine perfection, and whose inextricably intertwined words and images are among the most revered and iconic of Western civilization, has since become the most widely illustrated novel in existence. Several factors are involved: the work’s lack of textual descriptions, which engenders a wide artistic license; how deeply and radically it delves into the human psyche, granting artists permission to explore their own versions of the exotic, paradoxical spaces inside Alice’s dream worlds; its ubiquity in our culture, calling forth an identification with its heroine or other characters and sparking childhood memories; and, it must be admitted, commercial reasons. These factors will be discussed in depth later. But let us begin—as the King of Hearts instructs us—at the beginning. T he exterior life of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was so monumentally dull that it can satisfactorily be given in its entirely in a few phrases: he was born in 1832 and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1851, where he remained as a bachelor and mathematical lecturer until his death in 1898, traveling only once outside of England (to Russia) in 1867. And yet, Dodgson’s interior life, usually revealed under the nom de plume Lewis Carroll, was of such a magnitude and magnificence that today, nearly 150 years after a certain boat trip up the Isis (Thames) during which he told an amusing, nonsensical tale to the Dean’s three daughters (one of them named Alice), fuels a vast industry of books, movies and television productions, theater, music, merchandise, scholarship, discussion, and websites. Shortly after the now-famous boat ride on July 4, 1862, Alice Pleasance Liddell, the ten-year-old daughter of Dean Henry George Liddell, asked her friend Mr. Dodgson to write down for her the tale he spontaneously had spun. His handwritten and self-illustrated manuscript, which he called Alice’s Adventures under Ground, was presented to her in November 1864. He was encouraged by many to expand the volume for publication and did so, nearly doubling its length and adding many scenes and characters, including the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, the mad Hatter, and the Duchess. Realizing that his own illustrations, charming as they were (he later published them in a facsimile edition with Macmillan in 1886), would not be well received by a public that had high standards in draughtsmanship, Dodgson sought out John Tenniel, the premier cartoonist for the humorous weekly magazine Punch, for the job. Tenniel agreed in April 1864, and the collaboration, while occasionally stormy, resulted in the indelible images we know today. The work’s publication in 1865 (by Macmillan in England) and 1866 (Appleton, in the United States) was immediately—and irrevocably—an unprecedented success with critics and the public, both children and adults, including HRH Queen Victoria herself. This did not go unnoticed by other publishers. Thomas Crowell brought out a fine American edition in 1893 with one color frontispiece, and others, such as M. A. Donohue in 1901, put out unauthorized editions with the Tenniel illustrations. But the proverbial dam burst in 1907, when the British copyright expired. T he Edwardian era in the United Kingdom was a Golden Age for illustrated children’s books, including classics such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), Peter and Wendy (1911), and, in America, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). The combination of artistic excellence and commercial prowess, unsurprisingly, gave rise to some of the finest illustrated versions of Wonderland we are ever likely to see, in a variety of approaches ranging from the Art Nouveau stylings of Charles Robinson to the fanciful illuminations of Arthur Rackham. Although the volume you hold in your hands highlights the magnificent illustrators of the Golden Age of the Victorian and, particularly, the Edwardian eras, it also includes those of Barry Moser, whose Pennyroyal Alice came out in a fine press edition in 1983, as representative of all that has come after that initial outpouring. Indeed, in the post-Tenniel years, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and its 1872 successor, Through the Looking-Glass) have attracted literally hundreds of the finest illustrators from all over the world. Among the most famous are Harry Furniss, Beatrix Potter (yet unpublished), Willy Pogány, Marie Laurencin, Max Ernst, Mervyn Peake, Salvador Dalí, Peter Blake, Ralph Steadman, and Helen Oxenbury, and there are scores of lesser-known lights. Add to these the countless illustrators of non-English editions whose names will not be familiar to us: some, of course, are Tenniel knock-offs, but many, particularly the Russians and Eastern Europeans, possess unique and sometimes disturbing visions, coupled with sensational renderings. In addition, there exist the visual concepts of theatrical productions, musicals, and operas, and of filmmakers from Thomas Edison in 1910 through Tim Burton a century later— not to mention comic and manga artists, or the thousands of artists who have not published their work in book form, whose work speaks through original drawings, paintings, prints, T-shirts and other merchandise, and online digital renderings. Every art movement of the last and present centuries has been embraced: Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Surrealism, Pop Art, Photorealism, Minimalism, and fantasy, to name a few. But now we must further address the question: what makes these particular books so irresistible to artists? F irst, the book itself carries few descriptions of the setting or the physical appearance of the characters; Carroll’s collaboration with Tenniel—one might more accurately call it art direction—was both a substitute and an enhancement. In the original, handwritten manuscript in which Carroll wrote the tale for the Misses Liddell, he himself provided the pictures, which are somewhat primitive but quite amiable and served as sketches for Tenniel to work with. But in “the after-time,” this lack of narrative depiction has added richness to the license of subsequent illustrators to depict Alice herself, and the eccentric individuals she meets, not to mention the background, settings, and overall style, and to explore their own visions of the text. Tenniel himself occasionally was at variance with the manuscript: for