Illustrations of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

By artists other than Tenniel

In 1907 the British copyright on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland expired, and any publisher was free to create a new edition. Several did, and to differentiate themselves from the others (as well as to create copyrightable property of their own) many chose to produce new illustrated editions. Luckily, this event coincided with what Richard Dalby calls the peak of the Golden Age of children's book illustration, "the decade from 1905 to 1914 when dozens of opulent large quarto gift books with mounted colour plates... were published every year." Of course, American publishers were not so scrupulous, and new illustrated editions predate 1907 (e.g. Newell 1901, Kirk 1904).

These books are collectors items now, and many command a premium in the antiquarian book market. Harvard, Princeton, and the Library of Congress house collections that are rarely seen by the public. Private collections abound, including that of the Lovetts, and many illustrations can be seen in the recent Bantam edition compiled and arranged by Cooper Edens.

(Note, I do not deal in buying and selling old books. For information about prices of Alice books, you may want to try Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) World Wide Web Server. )

The passage of time has put many of these works into the public domain as well, at least in the U.S. I offer here, from my own collection, a complete catalog of the color plates by the following artists:

Attwell, Mabel Lucie. London: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1910.

Gutmann, Bessie Pease. New York: Dodge, 1907.

Hudson, Gwynedd M. London: Hodder, 1922; New York: Dodd, 1922.

Jackson, A.E. New York: Henry Frowde, 1914; London: Frowde, 1915.

Kirk, Maria L. New York: Stokes, 1904.

Rackham, Arthur. London: William Heinemann, 1907. (Added June 15, 1996)

Under construction, the following artist's images will eventually be cataloged here also:


Newell, Peter. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1901.

Soper, George. London: Headley, 1911; New York: Baker, 1911.

Sowerby, Millicent. London:Chatto and Windus, 1907. (See Denise Ortakales's biography of Sowerby .)

Tarrant, Margaret W. London: Ward, Lock and Co. Ltd., 1916. (See Denise Ortakales's biography of Tarrant .)

Walker, W.H. London: John Lane, 1907.

Woodward, Alice B. London: G. Bell, 1913.

Bibliography

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Ultimate Illustrated Edition. Compiled & Arranged by Cooper Edens. New York: Bantam Books,1989.

Dalby, Richard, The Golden Age Of Children's Book Illustration, New York: Gallery Books, 1991.

Lovett, Charles C. & Stephanie B. Lewis Carroll's Alice: an annotated checklist of the Lovett Collection, Westport Ct. & London: Meckler, 1990.

Ovenden, Graham (ed.), The Illustrators of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, London: Academy Editions, 1972 (Revised 1979).


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