Peeping Presents
Did it again! Bought a book for a dear friend of mine and before presenting it to her –just had to take a peep! I could not possibly avoid the temptation: the book in question is the latest, state-of-the-art, definitive edition of The Annotated Alice by none other than journalist, mathematician and Carrollinian sleuth Martin Gardner1.
Similarly to the dog-eared paperback edition I own2, this beautiful hardback published by W.W. Norton & Co., includes Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as originally illustrated by John Tenniel. However, it brings along a few extra bonuses: new and revised annotations, a whole deleted episode from the second Alice book called “The Wasp in the Wig” ; the facsimile letter of a somewhat tired Tenniel urging Carroll to do away with the “[…] wasp chapter which doesn´t interest me in the least, and I can´t see my way into a picture” , plus a wealth of bibliographical references –filmography on Alice as well.
Before re-wrapping and making the present respectable again, an idea dawned on me. Wouldn´t my co-bloggers enjoy sharing some of my ´peeping´, as well? Certainly so, I told myself. So here I go, giving you a glimpse of some of the material plus samples of the drawings that accompanied the very first Alice MS, called Alice´s Adventures Under Ground, illustrated by Lewis Carroll himself3!
According to his biographers, Dodgson loved drawing and had entertained the idea of becoming an artist. The quirky, nonsensical tone of the drawings illustrating the Rectory Umbrella4 –one of the many home magazines he put together as a child for his enjoyment and that of his brothers and sisters, eleven in all —was also a feature of the MS he offered the real Alice when he decided to put down the story he´d shared with her and her sisters and illustrated it. But when his friend Ruskin saw the drawings, he urged him to commission Punch cartoonist, John Tenniel, to do so instead. Though Dodgson managed to recover the facsimile edition of his original –published as a limited edition in 1886– the MS was eventually auctioned and is now in the British Museum5.
As sometimes is the case, this artistic couple´s relationship was far from congenial reaching at times the brink of exasperation. Irritated at Carroll´s demands, Tenniel´s claimed to have described Carroll as “that conceited old Don”6 . Not surprisingly both men were quite exacting as to their respective work; no doubt Dodgson may have proved a pain in the neck when placing demands on his illustrator yet Tenniel, despite blindness in one eye , must have in turn irked the writer when claiming to have “a wonderful memory for observation”7 while refusing to accept any models –photos or live– for his rendering of Alice.
Time now to enjoy the attached illustrations, judge for yourselves Carroll´s artwork, and join in the gossip by reading Tenniel´s extant letter. As for myself, I´ll do my very best in redecorating the parcel neatly so my friend doesn´t suspect a thing. Wish me luck!
Contributed by Cristina Grondona White
Notes
1 Gardner, Martin, ed. (1999). The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Illustrated by J. Tenniel.
2 Carroll, Lewis (1970). The Annotated Alice. Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd. Illustrated by J. Tenniel.
3Carroll, Lewis (1929, 1965). Alice´s Adventures Under Ground. Facsimile of the author´s manuscript book with additional material from the facsimile edition of 1886. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
4Pudney, John (1976). Lewis Carroll and His World. London: Thames and Hudson.
5 In his “Prefatory Note” to the Everyman Edition, Roger Lacelyn Green states the MS in question sold for £30.000.
6The Oxford Companion to Children´s Literature, H.Carpenter and Mari Prichard (1984). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 521.
7Op. cit., p. 522.
