My Theory about Edgar Thurstan's Alice illustrations

It’s been quite a week. I retired from teaching officially in August. I was more than ready to finish teaching but not yet ready to finish working. Look, you’re a long time retired (hopefully). So I applied for a temporary position in admin with the NHS. I got the job and began in September. The salary combined with my teacher’s pension leaves us a little better off than we were, as opposed to taking a pretty big drop if we just lived on the teacher’s pension. My thinking was that it is easier to turn a temporary position into a permanent one from inside rather than out. I’ve been loving the job, however the opportunity arose for a slightly different position, doing a very similar job, but it’s permanent. Forty five of us applied. 12 of us were shortlisted for interview. I was offered the job. Even though this was what I wanted and planned, considering my age and inexperience I can’t believe that it has all worked out according to the master plan, and so quickly.

As if that wasn’t enough, my copy of the Odham’s edition of the Alice books, c. 1930, with the illustrations by Edgar Thurstan arrived. Well, the memories and nostalgia it evokes are worth the price of admission by themselves. My copy of an edition that uses Harry Rountree’s illustrations from 1928 came as well, so for now I’d say my Alice collection is complete – although I’m not ruling out looking for a copy of the TH Robinson/Charles Pears either.

Coming back to Edgar Thurstan’s illustrations, the first thing to note is that there aren’t a great many of them. I made it 21 in total for the two books combined. That compares to 92 Tenniel’s. I made the point last week that Edgar’s illustrations mostly owe a lot to Tenniel’s, in both style and content.  This illustration of Alice, the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle is a decent demonstration of my point.

Compare this with Tenniel’s illustration of the same scene –

Here’s the two side by side

Essentially it seems to me that Edgar has taken Tenniel’s sketch and swapped the direction in which Alice if facing, and the positions of the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. Yes, there are a few slight differences between the characters – the Gryphon lacks ears for example. For the most part though the debt to Tenniel is clear.

Why should this be, though? Well – and I stress that this is just my hypothesis and I have no evidence other than the illustrations themselves – this is what I think. At the time that Lewis Carroll passed away, copyright lasted for just ten years after the owner’s death, However, by the time that Sir John Tenniel passed away the copyright law had changed, with copyright remaining for fifty years after the copyright owner’s death. Thus while the books passed into the public domain in 1907, Tenniel’s illustrations did not until 1965 – incidentally within my own lifetime. So my guess is this. For what is essentially a popular edition, Odham’s might have wanted to use Tenniel’s illustrations, but didn’t because of copyright issues. So I guess they engaged Edgar, telling him to stick to as much of the style and substance of Tenniel’s illustrations as he could without breaking copyright.

And to be fair, the way that he has changed viewpoint, and characters’ positions while still retaining much of the feel of Tenniel’s originals is pretty remarkable, and a demonstration of skill.

However the flip side of this is that Thurstan’s more original illustrations – the croquet match, the mad tea party and the caterpillar – are, to my mind, the weakest of the set. For example, his depiction of the caterpillar gives him face on, which I feel is a mistake as it has none of the care or feel for character that his most derivative illustrations do.

I’ll leave you for now with a question. If you could only draw ten illustrations for Wonderland, which ten would you include. Or to put it another way, which could you possibly leave out?