Emily's Adventures in Wonderland: What is the use of a book without pictures?

I love art, so naturally I love illustrations in books. One of the things I hated the most when I was younger and started reading novels was the lack of illustration in most of the books I had to read. Sure, it’s fun to imagine scenes and characters on your own, but it’s great to be able to look at pictures of what you’re reading, even if the book contains just a few illustrations.

The first edition Alice and the Penguin Classics edition have the same illustrations by John Tenniel. Tenniel created forty-two illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll gave Tenniel extremely precise instructions on how the illustrations should look. He even provided Tenniel with photographs. It is thought that Alice may be based off of Mary Hilton Badcock.

Tenniel created the illustrations by making preliminary sketches, and then adding ink and Chinese white to simulate wood engraver’s lines. He used tracing paper to transfer the designs to woodblocks. The woodblocks for the Alice illustrations were engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, the premier woodblock-engravers of Victorian England. Electrotype plates were made from the woodblock engravings, and those plates were used as the masters to print the illustrations in the books. The original plates were found in a bank vault in 1981. They are now in the British Library.

Alice meets the caterpillar. In the bottom left corner, you can see both Tenniel's initials and "DALZIEL" for the engravers.

Tenniel's Tea Party.

Alice and the cards

Camille Rose Garcia created the illustrations in my other Alice book. Her goal with the illustrations was to reinterpret the iconic story that is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She started with multiple pencil sketches, and picked the best ideas from all the sketches. The illustrations are done with watercolors and acrylics. Her illustrations are inspired by the things she collects, as is all her artwork. Her favorite scene to illustrate was the Lobster Quadrille, a scene Tenniel never illustrated for the original, because she always imagined how it would be every time she read it.