Alice in Cartoonland

Alice, the White Rabbit, the Hatter and the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat and the despotic Queen of
Hearts were introduced to the world by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first
published in 1865. Seven years later came a sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice
Found There, with more memorable characters including the Jabberwock, Humpty Dumpty, the
Walrus and the Carpenter and the Kings, Queens and Knights of the chessboard.

Over the last 150 years, the curious creatures from Carroll’s topsy-turvy realms have become part
of popular culture the world over, not just in books, plays and films, toys, games and millions of
products from food to clothing but also in – cartoons. To mark the 150th anniversary of the
publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Cartoon Museum has invited the writer Brian
Sibley, President of the Lewis Carroll Society, to curate its exhibition Alice in Cartoonland, which
looks at how cartoon and comic artists have reinterpreted the book’s characters since its
publication in 1865.

The relationship between Alice and cartoons goes back to the very beginning. Lewis Carroll (real
name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) had been fascinated with cartoons and had drawn his own
humorous sketches since boyhood. When he wrote out the first version of his famous story,
originally called Alice’s Adventures Underground, he added his own uniquely quirky illustrations of
Dodos and hookah-smoking Caterpillars.

In seeking a professional illustrator for the published version, Carroll chose John Tenniel, the
leading cartoonist of his day, whose caricatures of Victorian politicians and celebrities appeared
every week in the pages of Punch. The Alice books are a true collaboration between Dodgson’s
extraordinary imagination and Tenniel’s graphic wit: for example, the Hatter’s iconic topper with
its pre-decimal price label (‘In this Style, 10/6’) never appeared in the text but was one of Tenniel’s
many embellishments which has since become part of the canon.

The stories and their illustrations were an instant success, and within a very short time people
were using the characters and their quotable lines to make satirical comment on current affairs. In
1899 even John Tenniel couldn’t resist drawing a topical cartoon for Punch based on his own
illustration of Alice’s encounter with the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle! And that was just the
beginning...

The exhibition of over 100 items shows how Alice and her court of characters have been taken into
every area of cartoon and comic life. There are political cartoons by Steve Bell, Fluck and Law,
David Low, Martin Rowson, E. H. Shepard and Sidney Strube, and joke cartoons by Ian Baker, Tom
Gauld, Bill Stott and Kipper Williams. In the 1960s and 70s Ralph Steadman produced his own
award-winning reinterpretation of Carroll’s text, and used the characters as a prism through which
to re-imagine events of the day.In advertising, Alice has been used to sell everything from Guinness to biscuits, fridges to cars.

Comic versions of Alice have been around for over sixty years, and the exhibition will include the
1949 Classics Illustrated version as well as Marvel and more recent versions by Bryan Talbot, Hunt
Emerson and Ethan Van Sciver. The exhibition also includes cels from Disney and Hanna-Barbera
animations, as well as stamps, toys, prints and posters from other animations and computer games.
A special feature of the exhibition will be the ‘Alice through the Rabbit Hole’ Praxinoscope, which
the museum has commissioned from animator Owen Rimington.