Adriana Peliano
These 5 post serve as a visual supplement to the article forthcoming in Knight Letter, the magazine of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, Volume III, Issue 14, No. 114, Spring 2025
Special books return to readers and artists as if asking to be revisited. As Italo Calvino said, a classic never finishes saying what it has to say (1) and like Heraclitus’ river, we never read Alice the same way twice. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland may be the most illustrated novel of all time, yet some artists deserve special attention—the Alice re-illustrators. Somewhat surprisingly, and of course depending on one’s definition of what it means to “re-illustrate,” there are twenty-four of them (thus far)! They return to Wonderland driven by evolving artistic vision, new techniques, or personal transformation. Some answer editorial invitations, while others feel an inner urge to reinterpret the story through shifting creative and life experiences. What changes when an artist steps into Wonderland again?
In The Nursery “Alice” (1890), (Macmillan, 1890) John Tenniel did not re-illustrate his images, but they were transformed through the addition of color and a new editorial approach.(2) Twenty illustrations were colored for the first time (3), softening the original engravings and bringing more expressiveness to the characters—most notably, the Queen of Hearts’ intensely flushed face. Alice herself appeared brighter and more cheerful, with softened tones, rosy cheeks, and a new outfit: a yellow dress with green accents, a large bow, and a hair band. Beyond these visual modifications, Carroll integrated the illustrations into the very act of reading, encouraging interaction with prompts like Look at the picture, and tell me what you see. This approach drew text and image closer together, making the reader feel like a participant in Alice’s journey.
A few illustrators revise select images rather than re-illustrate entire books. Barry Moser, Ralph Steadman, and Mervyn Peake all altered their illustrations in later editions, reflecting stylistic or individual evolution. Others reshaped Alice through distinct artistic lenses—dreamlike, playful, surreal, modernist, metamorphic, idiosyncratic, or playfully experimental. There are many Russian artists who published second sets along these lines, but we don’t have room to speak at length about them in this article; they include the husband-and-wife team of Irina Yakimova and Igor Zuev,(4) Alexander Koshkin, (5) Viktor Chizhikov,(6) Andrei Martynov, (7) and the wonderful Maxim Mitrofanov, whose work and evolution is discussed in great detail on Knight Letter.
Maxim Mitrofanov, 2019
Not all artists return to Wonderland through direct illustration. Charles Blackman, for instance, never illustrated the book per se. Instead, he immersed himself in Wonderland through his deeply personal and symbolic paintings. Inspired by his wife Barbara’s vision loss during pregnancy, he reimagined Alice as a figure caught between estrangement and freedom. His Alice evolved beyond Carroll’s text, becoming a symbol of imagination, transformation, and personal mythology. Blackman expanded Wonderland into a realm of artistic exploration, where Alice drifts between personal narrative and universal archetype.(8)
Comment: Reillustration, for Blackman, was not just a return but a deepening—his Alice moves from personal metaphor to universal mithology, shifting between estrangement and self-discovery, between inner vision and the ever-unfolding possibilities of Wonderland.
(1) Why Read the Classics?, Knopf Doubleday, 1999.
(2) Other changes have been documented fully by Brian Sibley (Jabberwocky vol. 4 no. 4, 1975) and are also noted in Michael Hancher’s The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books. For example, in the trial scene, the emblem on the pikeman’s tunic changed from clubs to hearts, and in the picture of the White Rabbit holding his watch the time shown on the watch is different.
(3) Colored by E. Gertrude Thomson.
(4) Alice for Little Ones, Rosmen, 2013, and AW and LG, Labyrinth, 2019.
(5) Detskaia Literatura, 1983, and Egmont, 2005.
(6) First published in black and white in Пионер (Pioneer) magazine 1971–72, later issued as a separate book (Labyrinth, 2012), then fully colored (Labyrinth, 2020; Szkeo 2023).
(7) Christina and Olga, 1993, and Omega, 2007. His Looking-Glass illustrations were published in Pioneer magazine nos. 1–4, 1992 but never collected into book form.
(8) His Wonderland was published by Reed in 1982. He also illustrated a children’s book, Nadine Amadio’s The New Adventures of Alice in Rainforest Land (Watermark, 1988), and the National Gallery of Victoria (NSW, Australia) published an exhibition catalogue of his paintings, Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland, in 2006.
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