Tenniel's Alice and Other Alices

I’m sure that I’ve explained how I first came into contact with the books before, but in case I haven’t or you missed it, here goes. My parents never had their own house so they, my two brothers and I all lived in my grandmother’s house. My grandfather died a few years before I was born. My parents didn’t keep a lot of books, but I remember that in the living room on a shelf above the bureau there were some red hardbacked copies of famous novels. There weren’t a huge number of them. I can remember there being David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Little Women and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and Alice through the Looking Glass). There was also the copy of Great Expectations that my Mum had won in school, which belonged to a different set.

These books, the look of them with the gold lettering on their faded red cloth spines, fascinated me from a very early age. My grandfather had bought them. I was told that they were published by the Daily Express in 1933. Now, I find that they were in fact published by Odhams. My Nan always reckoned that they’d had more of them at one time, but how many they’d had and what happened to the others I don’t recall asking. Too late to ask now.

So, as I said, I was fascinated by them. Time would eventually come when I would read all of them, except Little Women, which I’ve never read yet. Not a conscious choice not to, I just haven’t. I enjoyed all of them except Jane Eyre. But when I was first becoming interested in things around me, the only one I could even try to read was Alice. It helped that Alice had illustrations. At that tender age I didn’t really get much of the story, and some of the pictures frightened me. But then, kids do like to be frightened to an extent. Later on I would identify these as the Tenniel illustrations - but they were not! Knowing what I know now the confusion is understandable. I'll say more about that later. Then, only a couple of years later, there was a kids’ TV series on – it may have been at lunchtimes – when an actor, who may well have been Aubrey Morris read out the stories in a series of short episodes while Tenniel’s illustrations were shown periodically. I was hooked on the stories. This was also when I developed a preference for Looking Glass over Wonderland.

So maybe this is it, that Alice has maintained my fascination because it at least helped to ignite a spark in me of two things which I would come to love very much – drawing and literature. Perhaps – it works as an explanation to me at any rate. 

Before we start I perhaps should say that the first ever illustrator of Alice in Wonderland was Lewis Carroll himself. Persuaded by Alice Liddell, Carroll began writing them down, finally putting them all into a book in manuscript form together with 37 of his own hand drawn illustrations, which he presented to Alice as a Christmas gift in 1864. I have made just a couple of copies of Carroll's own illustrations - which you can see here.

What a gift to be given! I believe that Alice Hargreaves nee Liddell held onto it all of her life, then it eventually ended up in the British Museum, which is quite appropriate considering the treasure that it is. Carroll was neither artist nor illustrator, but his drawings do give us some insight into what he envisaged himself when he wrote the stories. 

The Alice Project

Some illustrations call out to me and make me want to try to copy them. Through my interest in Sir John Tenniel, I copied a number of his illustrations - some from Punch and some from the Alice books over the years. 

This mutated into my Alice Project. This was a personal challenge I made to myself in 2022 to copy all 92 of his illustrations to both books. You can't undertake a challenge like that without becoming deeply interested in the illustrations and the choices that Tenniel made when creating them. As I worked on my copies of Tenniel's illustrations this led to me wonder about the choices that other illustrators made when faced with the challenge of making their own illustrations. After all, since 1907 when the copyright lapsed, any would-be illustrator of Alice faces two big questions - 

1) How will I depict what Lewis Carroll wrote?

2) How do I get away from the ways that John Tenniel illustrated it?

This in turn led to me looking out for other illustrations of the books, and over the last few years I have copied some of the work of several of them. It isn't an attempt to take a comprehensive look at how Alice has been depicted through the years, and the illustrators I've tried to copy are purely a personal choice. I find that while some contemporary illustrators' work is really inspiring, like the brilliant 21st century illustrations of the books by John Vernon Lord, for the most part the styles used by contemporary illustrators in their work just doesn't call out to me to try to copy it - and to be honest I don't think that I have the skill set to do so if I tried. 

Here's what I've done. First, let's begin with my copies of Tenniel's illustrations

Sir John Tenniel

Now, if you've ever thought about trying to copy Tenniel's illustrations, I think I should add a word or two of warning before we go much further. Tenniel illustrated the Alice books when they were first published in the 1860s. The original drawings were then hand engraved, as was demanded by the printing processes of the time. This necessitated a certain style involving much hatching and cross hatching, and many of Tenniel's sketches contain a huge amount of background detail. You get a lot for your money as a viewer. As a copyist, though, it can be a demanding process trying to reproduce this as well as you can. I'm fortunate in as much as I love this Victorian engraving style of illustration, and was already experienced in trying to reproduce it with fineliner long before I began the Alice project. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a go, but just trying to let you know what you could be letting yourself in for.  

This illustration from Through the Looking Glass was one of the first copies of an Alice illustration that I ever made. And right from the start you can see what would become a recurring problem for me - an inability to get Alice's face quite right. Here, without meaning to I've made her chin pointy. 

I haven't yet stopped to comment on many individual illustrations but I just had to for this one, my copy of Tenniel's masterpiece of the Jabberwocky. What a fantasy illustrator Tenniel was! A fantastic fantasy illustrator. Incidentally this was originally intended to be the frontispiece to Looking Glass, but feedback to the publishers suggested it was too scary and so a White Knight picture took its place. 

Some commentators have suggested that the White Knight was a caricature of Tenniel himself. Tenniel always said that this was not the case and any resemblance was coincidental.

Possibly due to his marathon career as political cartoonist for Punch, some commentators believe some of his Alice illustrations making a hidden political comment. For example, some believe that the unicorn here is based on Benjamin Disraeli, while the lion is William Gladstone. 

The caterpillar is one of my favourite characters in Wonderland although this is not one of my favourite Tenniel illustrations. However I don't think you have to use too much imagination to see that by using the top legs of the caterpillar cleverly, Tenniel has given him the silhouette of the head of Mr. Punch.

I love the way that this particular illustration interacts with the text. In the original there is text in the blank space on the right hand side of the picture. Tenniel does a similar thing with Alice looking up at the Cheshire Cat. 

Another picture where the picture wraps itself around the text. Tenniel may well have drawn on his earlier Punch cartoon, called Up A Tree, when making this illustration. 

I think it was this illustration of the absolutely huge headed ugly old Duchess that was the first Alice illustration to absolutely captivate me. Only, as I now know it was Edgar Thurstan's illustration of this same scene, seen from a different angle, that I was looking at over half a century ago, It frightened the pants off me for some reason but I was only tiny at the time. 

In the original drawing for this illustration from Looking Glass, Alice is shown wearing a crinoline dress. Lewis Carroll hated crinolines and asked Tenniel to change it. He obliged. Maybe it was this sort of thing that made Tenniel decide he would not illustrate any more children's books after Looking Glass. He diplomatically told Carroll he made the decision because he had quite lost the facility for doing so. 

This is Tenniel showing off just how clever he could be. Everything in the second picture is a reversal of the first, even Tenniel's own monogram. 

Some people believe that the man in the newspaper hat is Benjamin Disraeli. There's a general resemblance, certainly. To my way of thinking this illustration must have been a part of the inspiration for the lyrics of John Lennon's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", with its 'trains in a station' and 'newspaper taxis' and 'plasticine porters with looking glass ties.' When he talked about these images, though, John Lennon rather confusingly referred to this episode of the book as having come from "Alice in Wonderland" rather than "Alice through the Looking Glass" Mind you, he did think that the walrus was the hero of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" when he wrote "I am he Walrus" so there you go.

The story behind the illustrations for the Walrus and the Carpenter illustrations from Looking Glass shows that it wasn't just a one way process of Carroll issuing orders for Tenniel to follow. Carroll offered Tenniel to change the carpenter to a butterfly or a baronet, or any other suitable three syllable word, if it would make it easier and better to illustrate. Tenniel was more than equal to a carpenter though.

 I don't claim that I'm a good enough draughtsman to produce perfect copies of Tenniel's work, so you're more than welcome to think to yourself -  these copies aren't a patch on the originals. - You would be right to think so,  but I did find copying his illustrations to be both relaxing and rewarding. I hope that it's helped me understand why I find his work so effective a little bit better. 

Mervyn Peake

I don't know that anyone will ever produce a full set of illustrations for the Alice books that I end up loving more as a complete set than Tenniel's. But I do have other illustrators of the books who I really appreciate. Foremost of these is Mervyn Peake. He's probably best remembered for his novels, the Gormenghast Trilogy. However he wasn't just a great writer, he was also a brilliant illustrator as well, as seen from some of these copies here. I watched a BBC Documentary, where his son said that at about the same time he was starting to prepare the illustrations for Alice he was also attending the Nuremberg War Crimes trials after World War 2 and he is sure that they were influenced by what he saw and heard. As an aside, I also love Peake's illustrations of Treasure Island.

Mervyn Peake's illustrations of the Alice books are a mix of the more simple and conventional and the far more original and complex. This is not a criticism of the simpler illustrations like this one of the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. Even the simpler illustrations often have a movement and vitality that Tenniel rarely gives to his own. Many of Tenniel's are like staged tableaux - which is not to say that they are worse for it, just different.

It's really difficult to get away from Tenniel and do something completely different for parts of the stories. An example being the poem The Walrus and the Carpenter. Even someone as wonderfully original and creative as Quentin Blake drew on Tenniel's original as you will see further down the page. Mervyn Peake pulled it off spectacularly here with the Walrus. Yes, he's obviously still a Walrus, but this Walrus is far more anthropomorphic than Tenniel's, an obviously louche sort to whom you'd be wise never to lend a fiver.

I double checked and doubled checked, but I honestly feel that I have not exaggerated how sinister Mervyn Peake's Cheshire Cat looks. I do feel that there is just a very slight sinister undertone to some parts of the books, and this Cheshire Cat illustration certainly lays up the Cheshire Cat's mischievous anarchic nature to the limit.  

The first copy that I ever made of a Mervyn Peake Alice illustration. I'm often draw in by complexity and I love the contrast between the background and the figures of the Hatter ad the Hare. Nothing will probably ever challenge Tenniel's Hatter, but this is a really appealing take on the characters. Tenniel's characters - whom I LOVE - have a remoteness about them. I don't feel, for example, that I've ever met anyone like his March Hare. But just one look at Peake's illustration and I know for a fact that I have met people like his March Hare. 

The next half dozen or so are all copies of some of the simpler illustrations in the two books, but look and see if you think what I have said is true - that Peake very often gives great movement where Tenniel didn't, and that these figures are all invested with recognisable character.

I made this copy of Peake's illustration from the Wool and Water chapter of Alice Through the Looking Glass because I'd just bought a new Royal Talens sketchbook and I wanted to put it through it's paces. I like this more complicated illustration because I feel it's closer in style to some of Tenniel's work. I'm thinking particularly of the background and also the details on the sheep's shawl. I like the way that Alice seems to be enjoying the ride too. 

In comparison with Tenniel, Peake's White Knight has a surprisingly noble, almost cavalier looking head, despite the freakish elongation of his legs and neck. Yet while Tenniel gave him a noble white charger, Peake gives him an emaciated nag.

How do you illustrate Alice herself? This is my copy of Mervyn Peake's coception of the character. 

There goes Bill. This lacks a little movement for me. Does it look like he is flying skywards to you?

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham is reckoned to be one of the finest artist illustrators of the British Golden Age of illustration, which lasted from just before the start of the 20th century until the first world war. At this time there was a market for sumptuously illustrated books , often given as Christmas presents. Rackham had made a name for himself with his fantasy illustrations of fairy tales, myths and legends, and so he was an obvious choice for the Alice books once the copyright ran out in 1907.

Rackham's style involved a bold use of ink, with a subtle use of watercolour, made possible by advances in printing at the time. Rackham's illustrations give the book a fairytale quality. I think he gets it spot on with his illustrations of the more fantastical characters, which I tried to copy, but less so in other illustrations featuring Alice herself. She seems a tiny bit older than Carroll's Alice, and a little too prim and proper. Just my opinion, feel free to disagree.

I included a photograph as well as a scan of my copy of this, which I think is possibly Arthur Rackham's finest illustration in the whole book. The colours come across better in the photograph. Sadly I'm nowhere near as good at using colour as Arthur Rackham is. But at least my copy gives you a hint of Rackham's strengths. He's really great at depicting this kind of fantasy woodland landscape. His caterpillar is one of my favourite depictions of this character.

The Cheshire Cat. To me it seems that Arthur Rackham is far more interested in depicting the tree than the cat itself. And if I could depict trees anything like as well as Rackham did, then I probably would be too.

This frog footman and the following mock turtle show just how difficult it can be to get away from Tenniel. Yes, this frog footman is sitting on the doorstep, rather than standing stiff and upright but he's recognisably the same character. But then, how else would you depict a footman? Many, many illustrators of the books depict the character in a similar way, and the same is true of the Mock Turtle.

Mervyn Peake got away from Tenniel's Mock Turtle, but Rackham seemed to have decided that if you can't beat 'em you should join 'em with his Mock Turtle - to me a very close cousin of Tenniel's.

Ralph Steadman

Ralph Steadman, who is still very much alive and kicking, is a world famous British artist, illustrator and cartoonist. In the late sixties Ralph Steadman illustrated both of the Alice books. Of all of the Alice illustrators I've seen I think that Ralph Steadman captures the madness and the twisted logic of the books better than anyone, even Tenniel. Which does not mean I like all of them. For me, Ralph Steadman as an illustrator is very marmite - I either absolutely love what he produces - the ones I've copied here are a few examples of the illustrations that I like - while I have a strong dislike of others, like his depictions of the Mad Hatter. In a way, that's how it should be, though. You don't want illustrations that just leave you cold with no real reaction one way or another. As with Mervyn Peake, I do love many of his Treasure Island illustrations as well. 

Oh my. I just love Ralph Steadman's illustration from the Wool and Water chapter of Alice Through the Looking Glass. I love the work of Aubrey Beardsley, who was working right at the end of the Victorian era. Beardsley was decades ahead of his time, and a huge influence on illustrations in the 60s. I believe that Ralph Steadman also loved Beardsley's work. Maybe It's just me, but in the interaction between Alice's hair and the dark pool I see reflections of Beardsley. This is my favourite illustration of this chapter, hands down.

In a lo of Ralph Steadman's work on the Alice books there's often a strong, geometrical, graphical quality and you can clearly see it in this copy of a sketch where the figures of Alice and Humpty Dumpty contrast with the straight lines of the background.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I love the original of this illustration, and for the rest of the time I hate it. I love the way that Alice peeps over the top of the mushroom, almost like a mirror image of Tenniel's illustration of the same scene. On the other hand I find something about the caterpillar deeply disturbing. To be fair, there is enough in Lewis Carroll's description to make out a case that the caterpillar is under the influence of some kind of narcotic. 

I haven't mentioned the way that Ralph Steadman depicts Alice herself. This picture illustrates a scene that Tenniel never illustrated himself, Alice falling down the rabbit hole. To me, Steadman's Alice is a conscious reflection of Tenniel's, down to the long, light hair and the pinafore dress. The most notable things about Steadman's Alice is her expression, often confused or bewildered, and her hair, which always flows ad adds movement to the scene depicted, however still she is standing.

Even though I've only copied a few of Ralph Steadman's illustrations so far, you may well have noticed something. Many of his characters, even anthropomorphic ones like the lobster above, wear trousers and many of those who do wear pinstripe trousers. My feeling is that pinstripe trousers are/were part of the 'uniform' of the Establishment', the powers that be, and even though Wonderland and Looking Glass world are worlds of illogic and seeming chaos, the characters all belong, all have their place within it - while Alice doesn't. 

To my mind the funniest illustration of Bill the lizard. The cap blowing off is a brilliant detail

Helen Oxenbury

Helen Oxenbury, who is also still with us at the time of writing, won the 1999 Kate Greenaway Medal for her illustrated Alice in Wonderland. Her illustrations are clean, and look deceptively simple. (they aren't simple at all, as you will find out if you try to copy them) They lighten the story, and kind of give it back to the children it was written for. What I like about Helen Oxenbury's illustrations are that they bring Alice herself into the modern day, without doing it in a self conscious or in yer face way. They have great charm, which is a quality that we often underrate. 

It's always interesting to see the choices that illustrators make,. Helen Oxenbury, like Charles Robinson before her, made the mock turtle into a tortoise.This makes perfect sense in the context of her illustrations of the Alice books. This is a FUN, modern Alice. Let's be honest, the concept of a Mock Turtle really has little or no meaning to a modern reader. I've never had mock turtle soup and precious few have ever even heard of it. I love that Alice is dancing with the pair of them.  

I do think that Helen Oxenbury must have known Mervyn Peake's illustrations. Like Peake she eschews the traditional top hat, having the Hatter wear several hats of different styles all at the same time. However if I'm being ultra critical, her Hatter doesn't seem mad enough. I like it that she's give him a 'spiv' moustache, but he's still too sane.

Edgar (EB) Thurstan

I came upon the original of this copy, which is by an artist called E.B.Thurstan. It was published in 1930. Frustratingly I was able to discover nothing about the artist. But I loved the original of this. 

I was a long way into my Alice project when I discovered that Edgar Thurstan had in fact produced the illustrations in the Odhams edition of the Alice books that I remembered from when I was tiny, which I mentioned in my introduction at the top of this page. Thurstan only produced 21 illustrations for the two books in total. Here's my copy of his illustration of Alice with the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle.

Now, if you compare it to Tenniel's illustration of the same scene it's very similar. The positions of the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle have been exchanged and Alice looks to the right rather than the left. But it isn't just the composition and content of the sketch that resembles Tenniel, but the style as well. 

For what it's worth, 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. I don't put our Edgar in the top drawer of Alice illustrators though for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he produced so few illustrations for the books. Secondly his best illustrations for the books are the ones that are extremely derivative of Tenniel's. The more original illustrations are weaker, in my opinion. Here's another of his derivative illustrations, this one from Looking Glass

Credit where it's due - to me the debt to Tenniel is obvious, but even so, technically it is an extremely well executed illustration.

Harry Furniss

This 1907 rendition of the White Rabbit was drawn by Harry Furniss. As well as working for Punch, the same magazine as Tenniel for 14 years, Furniss was also the illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s later “Sylvie and Bruno” novels. He worked closely with Carroll – probably too closely for his liking, and the story goes that it got to the point that he would pretend to be out when Carroll called round. After this Furniss vowed he would never work with Carroll again. It’s not surprising. After working with Carroll on “Looking Glass”, Tenniel told him that he had completely lost the facility of illustrating novels. Maybe that was true, but then it may just well be that he didn’t fancy ever working with Carroll again.

Harry Furniss was 11 years old when the book was first published, and so the story goes he was bitterly disappointed that he was too young to illustrate it. One of the reasons why he would never work with Carroll again after Sylvie and Bruno might well have been because the books were nothing like the Alice books. The copyright for Alice in Wonderland ran out in 1907, and Harry Furniss produced 20 illustrations for an edition.

If you look at Furniss’ white rabbit and compare it with Tenniel’s original, maybe you’ll have the same thought that I did occur to you – the same but different. At least Furniss illustrated something that Tenniel didn't, Alice actually falling down the rabbit hole. This is possibly my favourite Furniss illustration.

Let me show you my copy of Furniss' rendering of Alice talking to the caterpillar. It shows that Furniss' Alice is a little older and more mature looking than Tenniel's. Furniss' Alice is at least a little more animated than Rackham's.

Harry Rountree

Another Harry who illustrated Alice was Harry Rountree, a New Zealander who came to London to work in the first half of the 20th century. He actually illustrated Alice twice, in 1908 and then again in 1928. I think that these are from the same edition, which, judging by Alice's hairstyle is the 1928 edition. Harry Rountree did make painted illustrations of the books too, but it's these monochrome ones that really light my candle. They are just so redolent of a style of illustration in children's books that lasted from the 1920s right up until the 1960s and was still common in reprinted novels throughout my childhood. Other Alice illustrators who used a similar style at times include Walter Hawes, George Soper and Thomas Maybank (an earlier exponent than Rountree), but my fave Alice illustrator using this style is Harry Rountree. 

Tenniel did not illustrate Alice's Head reaching up through the tree canopy and startling the pigeon. This is maybe a little surprising since Lewis Carroll did draw his own illustration of this scene for Alice's Adventures Underground. It it has been a favourite of illustrators of the novels since. The neck here really does look snakelike which makes sense of the bird screeching that Alice is a serpent. 

I recently found online some examples of Harry Rountree's earlier illustrations to a 1908 edition of Alice. Most of these are colour plates - and very wonderful they are too. It's interesting to compare - I think this 1928 caterpillar is pretty similar to what he produced 20 years earlier. 

So- here's my copy. now, a lot of Harry Rountree's illustrations for the 1908 Alice, like this one of the caterpillar above, are watercolours. And Harry Rountree was very good with watercolour. And I am not. This is the best I could do with it. The houkah is pretty much the same in the 1928 black and white illustration above. The caterpillar is also very similar. In fact the biggest difference is Alice, who is very much the young Edwardian lady in the 1908 version. I used a photograph of my sketch because the colours come out more strongly than they do in a scan. See below for proof.

Like Tenniel, Rountree's March Hare has a realistic hare's head, with slightly more human arms. However, unlike Tenniel Rountree doesn't use visual clues to suggest the Hare's 'madness'

With many illustrators one of the characters that enables them to get right away from Tenniel is the Cheshire Cat. For me, Rountree's cat, well it's head, at least, gets away from the comfortable domestic house cat. This one has a touch of the wildcat about it - notice the pointed, fanglike teeth 

The White Rabbit - somehow not as anxious or dapper as a lot of other illustrators have chosen to depict him

Somehow the white rabbit still doesn't look quite as dapper as other illustrators made him,even in his herald uniform. Here's another comparison for you. Below is my copy of Harry Rountree's 1908 illustration of the same scene -photo above, scan below.

At first sight this illustration seems pretty similar to the Tenniel drawing of the same scene. However one choice that Harry Rountree made that Tenniel didn't was to have the frog's rear legs be genuinely elongated like a frog's legs would be. Tenniel's frog footman is basically a human figure with a frog's head. I'm not suggesting one way of doing it is intrinsically worse or better than the other, just pointing out the difference

Four decades before Ralph Steadman did something similar Harry Rountree depicted the Queen of Heart's cards being grumpy, pugnacious men painting the roses red.

How far do you try to get away from Tenniel when you illustrate the Mad Hatter is a question that all illustrators of Alice must consider. Harry Rountree gave his Hatter more proportionate limbs and body than Tenniel. But he's still dressed in tail coat and top hat, and his nose is disproportionately large.

As a rule, most illustrators since 1907 have either a) not illustrated the Mock Turtle - b) Produced something very similar to Tenniel's - or c) ignored the fact that it is a 'mock' turtle and draw it as a turtle of tortoise. This is how Harry Rountree depicted the character. This is as technically excellent as all of Rountree's work, but lacks originality.

This is oe of those illustrations you need to look at closely or a bit of time to make sense of it. This is Bill, the Lizard, in the courtroom

The Gryphon

My favourite illustration of there goes Bill

Sir Quentin Blake

Sir Quentin Blake is the living illustrator whom I would most like to see doing a complete set of illustrations for the Alice books. To the best of my knowledge he has never yet illustrated them. He has, however, illustrated The Walrus and the Carpenter poem from Looking Glass, and that's what I've copied here. 

At first glance this doesn't look like Tenniel's illustrations at all. In style, maybe not. Although if you look at the way he draws the oysters you'll maybe see much more a similarity than you thought.  Then look at the carpenter. He's wearing that same strange box type hat that Tenniel's does. To me, Blake is consciously echoing Tenniels work. 

The Heath Robinsons

Two brothers, Charles and Thomas Heath Robinson were amongst the first illustrators to illustrate "Alice in Wonderland" after the copyright ran out. They had a third brother - William Heath Robinson whose fame outlasted them both as an illustrator, but then he never illustrated the Alice books to the best of my knowledge. I think it's a bit of shame that he never illustrated the books. Illustrations from the earlier part of his career are similar in many ways to Charles' work, and I feel he might just have produced something very special - perhaps the closest thing to an Aubrey Beardsley style Alice. 

The first few of these are by Charles, whose work on Alice, although a little variable, I prefer to Thomas'. In particular I think that Alice in the pool of tears is an incredible piece of illustration.

I mentioned a while ago that I would love to see Sir Quentin Blake illustrate the Alice books fully. Well, the artist from the past whom I would most like to have illustrated Alice is Aubrey Beardsley. This is not necessarily the most appropriate choice considering the sensuality of a lot of Beardsley's work. But I think that this tour de force by Charles Robinson hints at what Beardsley might have brought. All 3 Robinson brothers were inspired by Beardsley's work, and the use of light and dark here, and the liquid swirls all put me in mind of Beardsley. It is one of my all time favourite Alice illustrations by ANY artist - albeit that Alice's eyes do look a little demonic, and that's not just in my copy either. Check out the original. 

Right then, of all the other illustrators whose work I have copied, whose would you say is closest in style to this copy of a Charles Robinson illustration of the Mock Turtle? In its use of geometric shapes (albeit circles and ellipses)  and very spare backgrounds, this is not a million miles away from what Ralph Steadman would do more than half a century later. In all honesty an illustration like this could easily have come from the 60s. It's interesting too that Charles Robinson seems to have got away from Tenniel's conception of the Mock Turtle by ignoring the 'mock' part of it. 

I find Charles Robinson's Alice illustrations a consistently interesting set. Like Peake they range from the very complex and detailed - the Pool of Tears - to the much simpler - the Mock Turtle. Yet all of Peake's illustrations look like they were made by the same artist. If you didn't know, would you pick out the pool of tears and mock turtle illustrations as having been created by the same hand? If we take these two illustrations as the extremes of a continuum, then the rest of Charles Robinson's work fits somewhere between the two. So, for example, this depiction of Alice meeting the caterpillar is further towards the more detailed pool of tears end of the spectrum . . . 

- his depiction of the Gryphon is far closer to the Mock Turtle end. Hardly surprising since it's the same part of the story. When he uses this much simpler style I find that Charles Robinson's Alice illustrations can be a little bit hit and miss. While the Mock Turtle illustration is brilliantly effective I do find that his Mad Hatter is well, for want of a better way of putting it, too sane.

The White Rabbit in page costume. I've already said this, but the contrast between those illustrations in this style, and those in the style he uses in the Pool of Tears illustration

I mean, compare Alice here with the Alice in the Pool of Tears. Although to be fair her eyes are still a little disturbing.  

This second Robinson set is by Charles' brother T.H. (Thomas Heath) Robinson. We start with my favourite rendition of Alice extending upwards like a telescope. 

This is another TH Robinson that I rather like, showing the caterpillar, complete with turban.

I tend to find Thomas' illustrations a less diverse group than Charles. It seems to me that Thomas' illustrations are closest in style to Charles' illustration of Alice meeting the caterpillar. This next picture is my copy of Thomas' illustration of the pool of tears-

The original of this sketch is an interesting demonstration of the similarities and differences between Thomas' work and that of his brother Charles. The swirling water is effective, but to me it lacks the impact of Charles' illustration of the same scene. Charles' Alice is in aguish at this point. TH's Alice here has a expression of - Oh, well, I'm swimming in a pool of my own tears, just another day at the office.-

I'd hate to give you the impression that I don't like TH Robinson's illustrations. Technically he was a brilliant draughtsman, like his brothers.But the original of this illustration with Alice , the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle illustrates the strengths and also the weakness of his Alice illustrations. It's a very well executed image, but it's a very traditional one. Yes, the Mock Turtle wears a top hat, but otherwise this is just following Tenniel's lead. It's quite static. Robison's Alice lacks the personality or real animation to put TH Robinson in the topmost drawer of Alice illustrators.

Another illustrator often mentioned in dispatches when discussing illustrators of Alice is Willy Pogany. 

He was a Hungarian born artist and illustrator who worked variously in Paris and London before settling in the USA about the time of the outbreak of World War One. He illustrated an edition published in the USA in 1929, which has proven popular. Willy Pogany's Alice is another slightly older version, and like Helen Oxenbury he presents Alice in a contemporary style - his Alice has been nicknamed the Flapper Alice. The style that Pogany uses for his Alice illustrations is pretty stripped back and clean. There's a lot of negative space in a lot of illustrations. If I'm honest, while I can see the skill, I don't find that his illustrations call out 'Copy me!' when I look at them in the way that a lot of other artists I've included on this page do. However, I love his sense of humour. One of his illustrations presents the playing cards as a line of Busby Berkeley type chorus girls - now that's just brilliant. 

Rene Cloke

The great Harry Rountree illustrated Alice twice, twenty years apart. Rene Cloke illustrated Alice on four separate occasions. Born Irene Mabel Cloke, in 1934 she produced a small handful of paintings and line drawings to illustrate extracts from the book in a compilation. In 1943 she produced over 80 illustrations for an edition of the book published the next year. This is probably the one best associated with her. The bumper crop of illustrations contain watercolours and a large number of ink drawings which are notable for their use of patches of red, or green or both. Again, I can appreciate Rene Cloke's skill, but her conception of the book isn't mine. Still, here's my copy of her Mad Hatter. 

Rene Cloke illustrated Alice again in 1979, and finally in 1990, a few years before she passed away.

Dave Clark

What a liberty! Putting myself in the company of the other Alice illustrators here. Well, I'm very sorry but now that I've managed to produce any illustrations for an Alice story that aren't complete pigswill I'm blowing my trumpet for all it's worth. The illustrations underneath accompany my as yet unfinished "Alice's Adventures at the Pole", 

The Mammoth and the Elephant's Daughter - a tragic pair of star cross'd lovers.

The Penguin - this is the only original illustration for Alice's Adventures at the Poles that I drew in my Royal Talens book. I do like the cream colour of the paper, but it doesn't go with the text as well as a whiter background. So from here on I've been using Moleskine and Hahnemuhle. I may well have to redo this on different paper

The Adventure begins

My first illustration including more of Alice than just her legs. I dressed her in a very traditional Alice dress to create a feeling of continuity that this is still Alice from Wonderland and looking glass, without quite being a slavish copy of Tenniel's.

I liked the first illustration I made featuring Alice so much that I used it as the basis for Alice in this picture too, just changing an arm and the leg positions.

2nd version of Snake illustration. John Tenniel may well have been depicting Benjamin Disraeli in two of his Looking Glass illustrations and if it was good enough for the Master . . . 

Original version of Snake Illustration

This is the second go I had to illustrate this scene. The previous one is similar but the figure of Alice wasn't close to being right and no, I'm not going to show it to you, sorry. It's not good enough.  

At the time of writing this is my favourite of my original illustrations of Alice. For one thing it is the spitting image of my granddaughter Amelia! It's a rare- very rare - example of the picture turning out exactly as I had hoped that it would.
 

This one is very self indulgent as it allows me to indulge in a horrible pun - this is Hugh Manatee.

Look in the background and you'll see a conscious borrowing from Tenniel - the greenhouse features in an illustration with Alice and the Hearts Royalty. 

This on the other hand makes no borrowing from Tenniel. 

Yes, you're right. This is the Prince of Whales.