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The author’s own images…

“What is the use of a book”, asks Alice in the opening scene to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “without pictures or conversations?” This question from Alice is at once a critique of her sister’s pictureless tome, and a paving the way for the delight of words and images to follow. Indeed, John Tenniel’s famous illustrations — for both the first edition of Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass — have become integral to how we experience the story, in both books and film. Tenniel, however, was not the first to illustrate the tale. That honor belongs to Carroll himself, whose original manuscript of the story (then titled “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”) is littered with thirty-seven of his own sepia-ink drawings. It seems this entwining of word and image — so important to the published version — was there from the beginning…

More of the backstory- and all 37 drawings– at “Lewis Carroll’s Illustrations for Alice’s Adventures Under Ground,” via @PublicDomainRev.

For more of Carroll, Alice, and her adventures, see here and here.

* Cheshire Cat

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As we believe impossible things, we might spare a thought for Robert Smirke; he died on this date in 1845. A painter and illustrator, he specialized in small pieces that depicted scenes in literature— for which he was elected to the Royal Academy.

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