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.