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Emily E. Roberts
Kimberly Tate Anderson
ENG 3805
29 April 2015
Alice Throughout the Ages
The way books are created is a technique that has transformed over time. Not only has
the content that is deemed worthy of being written down changed, but so have the technologies
used to produce books. An interesting way to observe how varied texts and their formats have
become is to compare and contrast different versions of
what started out as the same text. Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, by the English author Charles Dodgson who
wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll, was written in
manuscript form during the early 1850s. He started writing
the work November 13 1862 and finished it February 10
1863. This work is now public domain and has been re-
worked into several different television and film
adaptations and has inspired many songs, comic books, and
plays. One of the most successful of these re-makes is the
re-print of Alice in Wonderland with illustrations by Dali, which was published in 1969.
The original manuscript is currently housed in the British Library. It is just
under 12,000 words written in neat handwriting and contains 37 illustrations
drawn by Dodgson himself. The illustrations are done mostly in black ink, but
there is also some red ink used. He was not an artist and had some trouble with the
illustrations. The pages are protected by a simple and sturdy black leather cover, which is
decorated by the title in gold writing and few gold embellishments. The codex is also available in
a digitized format online.
Dodgson originally came up with this story while taking a boat trip down the River
Thames. He was accompanied by a colleague and the three daughters of Henry Liddell, the Dean
of his college. The story was intended to entertain the people on the boat, specifically the
children, on their long journey. One of the children, named Alice, was so fascinated by the story
that she asked Dodgson to write it down. He presented the 90-page manuscript to her a few years
later in the early 1860s. While writing the first draft, he never had an intended audience other
than young Alice. Some of his friends convinced him to publish it, so he edited it, added two
more chapters and had it illustrated by John Tenniel. The first print run sold out almost
immediately. It was successful in reaching a large audience, was loved by Queen Victoria and
Oscar Wilde, and has not ever been out of print since it was originally published.
If a reader were to handle the original manuscript, he or she would have a very unique
experience. Irregularities and smudges of ink can be seen in the original. When viewing this, one
would be able to flip the actual pages that were handled by Dodgson. They could feel the pages
and see the simple bounding Dodgson opted for when making the piece. Reading his handwriting
would be more difficult than reading the printed types we are used to reading today. Throughout
the manuscript there are a few spots where he crossed out errors. The codex format makes it easy
for the reader to keep track of where they were in the story. This makes reading the manuscript
very functional; especially for children, like Alice, who would probably not have read the whole
story in one sitting.
Alice later sold her manuscript at an auction to pay for death duties after the death of her
husband. It fell into the hands of an American collector, but was later given to the British Library
by a group of American benefactors as an act of gratitude for the British people’s roles in WWII.
Alice in Wonderland sparked the beginning of the popularity of children’s literature.
Before its popularity, children’s literature functioned more as a teaching vehicle. Books for
children were meant to be instructional and the children’s stories that were written for
entertainment were typically adaptations from adult literature.
In 1969, Alice in Wonderland was re-printed with
illustrations by Salvador Dali. It was published by New York’s
Maecenas Press-Random House and was distributed as their
book of the month. The work was printed in the format of a loose
portfolio housed in a customized clamshell box. In the book,
there are twelve full-page illustrations. Seen in every illustration,
but in different sizes is Alice jumping rope. This was probably
Dali’s way of pointing out that no matter how crazy the plot gets,
Alice is still the most important part of the story. Dali created a four-color frontispiece, through
sketched etching, and a full color image for every chapter. These illustrations were very
appropriate considering the time period they were produced in. This type of abstract
expressionism was very popular at the time. Dali created these illustrations using the technique
heliogravure, which is a type of photographic printing that can produce very colorful and vivid
images. A Photochemical process is used to produce the intaglio surface where the image is
etched on a copper plate.
This work differs from the original manuscript because the pages are larger in size and
the illustrations were done in a very different style than those Dodgson drew by hand in the
manuscript. It fits both of requirements needed to classify as an artist book because there was
notable artistry in production and there is exemplary artwork featured on pages of the book. It
seems this work could be enjoyed not just by children, but by art lovers as well. This volume
went on to become one of the most sought after Dali pieces of all time.
This page comes from a
version of Alice in Wonderland
illustrated by Salvador Dali. An
important component of the
materiality of this piece is the large
size of the pages. This makes the
image more visible and captivating.
The image takes up much more
space than the text. The format of
how the words are presented next to the illustration seems to enhance the image. The curved
shape made by the text mirrors the curved lines in the illustration. In a way the visual component
distracts from the serious matter described in the text.
The text appears in a similar format on a few pages
throughout the original manuscript version of Alice in
Wonderland. This arrangement shows the intention of the author
was to fully captivate the reader and make reading the story a fun
experience. Here, in the manuscript version, the presentation of
the words adds meaning to the words themselves. This is possible because Dodgson had the
resources and power to manipulate the page to his liking. The use of paper has come a long way
from when scribes had to utilize the whole writing surface because paper was such a valuable
resource.
Although the story is the same in the manuscript version of Alice in Wonderland and the
loose portfolio version produced almost one hundred years later with illustrations by Dali, the
functionality and materiality are varied. The manuscript was intended for Alice Liddell, while
the Dali illustrated version of the story was probably meant for children as well as Dali
enthusiasts and Alice in Wonderland enthusiasts. Now, anyone purchasing the book would have
to be a huge fan of Dali or Alice in Wonderland because the copies that are left are worth several
thousands of dollars. The manuscript is bound while the 1969 version illustrated by Dali consists
of pages that are a much larger size than those of the manuscript and is unbound, but housed in a
box. Since the pages are so large and are unbound, they can be a bit more difficult to turn than
those of the manuscript. Although the story and its themes stay consistent throughout each
version, the experience a reader would have with either book would be different; proving that
materiality and functionality play a large role in reading.