With arguable similarities between the looking-glass world of New York City and Wonderland, Manhattan is a fitting location for an exhibition honoring the 150-year anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s fantasy story. Carolyn Vega, assistant curator of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum, offered PW a private tour of the exhibition, which she refers to as “a bio of the book and how the story came to be.” It also tells the story of a partnership between two artists and perfectionists – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and illustrator John Tenniel – whose creative collaboration resulted in one of the most enduring works of English literature.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is an unrevised copy of Carroll’s original, 90-page manuscript, which travels very rarely from its home at the British Museum (the museum, however, has put the manuscript online, and it is viewable here). The book, titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, features 37 of Carroll’s own pen-and-ink drawings, and represents the first time Carroll wrote down the story of Alice. When Carroll decided to seek a publisher for the book, he chose Tenniel to create the art, recognizing that his own talents were more literary than illustrative. Sitting side-by-side in a display case are copies of the manuscript as well as the first printed edition, with Tenniel’s illustrations. Both are open to the passage in which Alice eats a bite of cake and grows tall.
In Carroll’s original drawing, the elongated Alice gazes down with a bemused expression as though trying to locate her shoes. Tenniel’s image of Alice grown tall shows a more polished and prodigious talent. Vega describes Tenniel’s Alice as “a much stronger character” than Carroll’s Alice, who “is confronting the change head-on,” rather than demurely observing it.
Carroll published the first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Alexander Macmillan in 1865, financing the project himself – effectively self-publishing. When Tenniel expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the images, Carroll wrestled over whether to pay more than £250 to have the books reprinted, doubting that the book would sell enough copies for him to break even. Nevertheless, Carroll took “the enormous financial risk,” Vega explained, and the book turned out to be an immediate success in England. In America, also, copies of the first edition that Tenniel had objected to found their way to American shores and unauthorized versions of the book soon began appearing in magazines.
Twenty-five years after the initial publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll and Tenniel paired again to create an abridged version of the book – The Nursery Alice – for younger readers, this time to be in color. Again, Tenniel was dissatisfied with the way the images appeared after the first printing, believing that they were too bright and garish, so the book went back to press. Incidentally, according to Vega, American audiences were critical of the final product, believing that the images were “not bright enough.”
Unlike many modern relationships between authors and illustrators, in which there is little interaction, Carroll was insistent upon being privy to the “precise size and placement of images,” Vega said. When Carroll decided to write Through the Looking Glass and again sought out Tenniel to illustrate, Tenniel was hesitant. At that point, he was a successful artist in high demand, and “he was perhaps reluctant to work again with such a fastidious author,” Vega said. In the end, he agreed. Vega noted that, ironically, “Tenniel was as much a perfectionist as Carroll,” as seen in his mark-ups on the page proofs featuring the Jabberwocky that were sent back to Tenniel from the engravers. The diligence of both writer and artist proved fruitful once again; published in 1871, the first two impressions for Through the Looking Glass sold out in seven weeks.
The ‘Persistence of Alice’
In addition to the early manuscript and first published editions, the Morgan exhibition features Carroll’s journal entries, one of which lightly details the circumstances of a boating outing with 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her family. It was on that occasion that Carroll first told the story of Alice and her discovery of a strange world underground. In subsequent entries, Carroll notes Alice’s requests to hear the story again and again, demanding that he follow through with a written copy. As Vega explained, the tale of Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole was very much in “the family’s repertoire of stories.” And, as with other self-published works, beloved within families, it might have remained only known to Alice and her siblings. It was “the persistence of Alice,” Vega said, that led to the publication of a story.
Alice herself is also a part of the exhibition, with several photographs of her on display (Carroll, a prolific amateur photographer, took a total of 11 photographs of Alice). Alice Liddell was the daughter of Charles Liddell, the dean at Christ Church College at Oxford University, where Carroll lectured on mathematics. Vega explained that, as the child of aristocratic parents, Alice led “a conventional Victorian life,” with a governess and numerous tutors. “She was a well-to-do little girl,” she said. Also on display are some of Alice’s personal belongings: her ruby ring, her Book of Common Prayer, and leather purse. Carroll’s interest in logic, nonsense, theater, and pantomime, are also highlighted at the exhibition, with pieces of Carroll’s paper toy theater set on display, as well as one of his earliest stories, “The Tale of a Tail,” which is about a cat with a very long tail that is eventually chopped off. Carroll’s time-pieces, logic puzzles and games, and a guide to the rules of croquet are also presented in a display case, all of which are thematically integrated into the Wonderland cosmos.
Merchandising and Adapting ‘Wonderland’
The success of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland led to some of the earliest examples of book licensing and merchandising. On display are a stamp case, slides for a child’s magic lantern toy, and a biscuit case illustrated with Tenniel’s images (allegedly, Carroll was irate to learn that the biscuit case would actually contain real biscuits – he eventually acquired all the tins and handed them out with the biscuits removed), and a rare 1886 facsimile of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which carries with it its own Victorian-era tale of intrigue: the photographer involved with manufacturing the facsimile absconded with the negatives taken from the original manuscript (they were eventually recovered).
In 1903, the world of Wonderland was for the first time adapted as a silent movie; the film is on steady stream at the exhibition. Vega explained that, while the directors do take some liberties with the narrative, the film makes “a real effort to replicate Tenniel’s illustrations.” Innumerable adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland have followed its publication, both on screen and in print (several book adaptations are available to peruse in the children’s reading area at the exhibition). Yet Vega noted that many of the illustrations in these adaptations truly “harken back to Tenniel’s,” underscoring their immutability, and how the text and images from the original book truly work in tandem.
Vega speculated as to why this particular children’s book – written for one little girl and effectively self-published – became such a lasting part of our modern lexicon and cultural zeitgeist. She believes that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland continues to resonate powerfully within our modern lives because it is “the story of a girl making sense out of nonsense,” and finding herself in the process. “It’s so identifiable,” she said.
