From the back advertisement of Carroll’s Eight or nine wise words about letter-writing (1890) illustration by John Tenniel.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson) first published in 1865 might be one of the better known books in the world. There are several editions of it, though the text content is more or less the same, the illustrations are varied. The most famous of Alice’s illustrations are by John Tenniel. Tenniel did the 42 illustrations in the first edition and these same illustrations are found in most later editions. This series of posts is an attempt to create a collection of various illustrations for Alice in Wonderland from middle of nineteenth century. For an in-depth analysis of Alice I highly recommend reading Martin Gardner‘s Annotated Alice, which has a lot of trivia and information about the books, the characters and the author.
All images in public domain unless mentioned otherwise.
In this post, we start with the hand-drawn manuscript from Carroll himself which was titled Alice’s Adventures Underground. Most of the illustrations that were done later follow these pen-drawn ones in content.
A treasured early manuscript version of one of the most famous and enduring children’s stories, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland c. 1864. Link Originally from the British Museum
The facsimile version contains 40 illustrations. These illustrations were then refined by Tenniel in his woodcuts for the first edition of the book. These pen drawn crude illustrations are also templates for most of the other drawings for Alice’s books.
Alice meets the mouse in the pool.
Alice led the way and the whole curious party swam ashore.
Alice has a long argument with a lory.
On various pretexts, they (birds) all moved off, and Alice was soon left alone.
Rabbit orders Alice to fetch gloves and nosegay!
Alice finds another bottle and drinks it!
..and grows in size
…till she is filling the entire room..
Alice’s hand comes out of the window of the house.
Alice kicks Bill, the green lizard, out of the chimney.
Alice meets the giant puppy.
Father William and his son.
Alice eats a mushroom and her chin is stuck to her foot!
Then she eats more and her neck shoots through the trees!
“Serpent!” A pigeon calls Alice.
Alice is of the right size and wants to go to the beautiful garden via the door in the tree.
Cards are painting white roses red in the garden.
The king and queen of hearts arrive with a knave carrying the crown in the cushion.
The curious croquet game.
Alice tries to play the croquet game with a live ostrich as a mallet and a live hedgehog as the croquet-ball.
The gryphon laid fast asleep in the Sun.
The Mock turtle tells his story.
The mock turtle and the gryphon in a tangle.
Mock turtle and gryphon sing and dance around Alice.
Sentencing of the knave of hearts for stealing of tarts.
“No!” said the Queen, “first the sentence, and then the evidence!”
Alice
