Alice Pleasance Liddell ( )

Transcription

1 A Golden Afternoon Charles Dodgson began the story of a little girl named Alice on an outing with Alice, Edith, and Lorina Liddell on July 4, He later recalled that golden afternoon in a poem that prefaces many editions of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland. All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretence Our wanderings to guide. Imperious Prima flashes forth Her edict to begin it : In gentler tones Secunda hopes There will be nonsense in it! While Tertia interrupts the tale Not more than once a minute. Thus grew the tale of Wonderland: Thus slowly, one by one, Its quaint events were hammered out And now the tale is done, And home we steer, a merry crew, Beneath the setting sun. Alice! A childish story take, And with a gentle hand, Lay it where Childhood s dreams are twined In Memory s mystic band, Like pilgrim s wither d wreath of flowers Pluck d in a far-off land.

2 Alice Pleasance Liddell ( ) Alice Liddell was born on May 4, 1852 in London. Alice and her family, including her brother Harry and sisters Lorina and Edith, moved to Oxford in 1855 when her father was appointed Dean of Christ Church at Oxford. She first met Charles Dodgson in April 1856 when she was almost four years old. Dodgson spent time with the children telling them stories, making puzzles, and going on outings. On one of these outings in July 1862, Dodgson began the story that became Alice s Adventures in Wonderland. In addition to Alice, the story contains references to Edith (the Eaglet) and Lorina, called Ina (the Lory). During the following year, there was a rift between Dodgson and the Liddell family and he rarely spent time with Alice or her siblings. Nevertheless, Dodgson continued his work on the story for Alice and presented her with the manuscript of Alice s Adventures Under Ground when she was 12. Like other girls of her social class, Alice did not receive an education outside her home. Her governess, Miss Prickett, taught her lessons, as did other teachers in specialized subjects. Alice also met with notable figures of her day. She took art lessons from John Ruskin. She was photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron. She knew Prince Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria, who acted as godfather to Alice s second son, his namesake. Alice lived at her family s home until the age of 28, when she married Reginald Hargreaves with whom she had three sons. Two of her sons died fighting in World War I. Alice Liddell Hargreaves retained the manuscript of Alice s Adventures Under Ground until 1928 when financial pressures encouraged her to sell it at auction. She died in 1934.

3 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ( ) The man who became famous as Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in His father was a clergyman educated at Oxford. Dodgson, the third of eleven siblings, grew up in northern England surrounded by his brothers and sisters. Together they put on plays and created family publications like the Rectory Magazine, on display in the exhibition. At an early age, Dodgson showed a talent for math and logic. In 1851, Charles left his family s home for Oxford where he remained for the rest of his life. He became a deacon in the Anglican Church, but never pursued the priesthood. Dodgson never married and did not have any children. Throughout his life, he maintained friendships with the children of his friends and colleagues. He wrote letters to and photographed his young friends, always with the permission of their parents. In 1856, Dodgson befriended the children of Henry Liddell, his new dean at Christ Church, Oxford. He took them on outings eventually taking the trip on July 4, 1862, on which he began the tale that would become Alice s Adventures in Wonderland. Encouraged by friends, Dodgson developed his Alice story into a book and funded its publication. He used the pseudonym Lewis Carroll to maintain his privacy. Though he is best known today for Alice s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Dodgson was an accomplished photographer, mathematician, and logician. He published in the fields of math and logic even as he continued to write stories for children under the name Lewis Carroll. Dodgson died in 1898, thirteen days before his 66th birthday.

4 John Tenniel ( ) John Tenniel had already made a name for himself as a political cartoonist and book illustrator when Lewis Carroll asked him to illustrate Alice s Adventures in Wonderland. Tenniel was hesitant, but Carroll convinced him to accept the job. Though scholars have suggested the relationship between Carroll and Tenniel was sometimes contentious, the partnership produced the best-known work of each of their respective careers. Tenniel shared his first illustration for Alice s Adventures in Wonderland with Carroll in October 1864 and had finalized forty-two illustrations by mid As he had done with Alice, Tenniel hesitated when Carroll asked him to create the illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass, but again Dodgson s persistence prevailed. It took Tenniel almost two years longer than he had originally estimated to complete the illustrations for Looking-Glass. Tenniel s last collaboration with Carroll was to oversee the hand coloring of twenty of Tenniel s original illustrations for The Nursery Alice, a version of the story for younger children. Today, Tenniel s illustrations remain the best-known visual representations of Alice and Wonderland.

5 Alice s Adventures Under Ground More than two years after he first told the story of Alice on the golden afternoon, Lewis Carroll presented Alice Liddell with a handwritten and illustrated edition of Alice s Adventures Under Ground. Alice s Adventures Under Ground will be familiar to readers of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, though it lacks characters like the Mad Hatter and Cheshire Cat that have become synonymous with the story. Though Carroll recognized his own illustrations as inadequate for a published edition, many of them served as the basis for John Tenniel s illustrations. Alice Liddell loaned the manuscript back to Carroll in 1885 for the publication of a facsimile edition. She kept it until 1928 when challenging financial conditions prompted her to sell the manuscript at auction. It was purchased for 15,400 by an American book dealer, A.S.W. Rosenbach, who then sold the book to Eldridge Johnson, founder of the Victor Talking-Machine Company. Following Johnson s death in 1946, the manuscript came back on the market. Again, it was purchased by Rosenbach, and, in 1948, a group of Americans bought the manuscript and presented it to Britain as a gift in appreciation of the country s courage during World War II. Today, Alice s Adventures Under Ground resides at the British Library, which has digitized the manuscript in its entirety. Use the touchscreen below to explore Carroll s original version.

6 The First Editions of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland When Lewis Carroll shared the first edition of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland with John Tenniel, Tenniel was dismayed at the quality of the printing of the illustrations. He found them to be inconsistent, with some rendered too heavily and others too lightly. Carroll discussed his options with his publisher, ultimately deciding to have a new printer, Richard Clay, reprint the entire book. Carroll had, however, already sent out gift copies of the first printing which he now attempted to get back. He sent at least thirty-four of these returned gift copies to charitable institutions, including children s hospitals. Today, fewer than twenty-five copies of this first edition are known to have survived. One of these, from the Ransom Center s collection, is located in this case. The edition printed by Richard Clay, the first one publicly available for sale, appeared in November 1865, though the date on the title page is The adjacent reproductions of the illustrations from both editions allow for comparison of the printing. The rejected sheets from the first printing, those that Tenniel declared inadequate, were sold to the New York publisher Appleton and Co. Thus, the first U.S. edition of Alice, published in May 1866, includes the suppressed sheets from what would have been the first British edition. Both Carroll and Tenniel were comfortable with an American edition featuring substandard printing.

7 Dodo? The dodo, a flightless bird found on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, was extinct by the end of the 1600s. Scientists speculate that a combination of hunting by sailors and the destruction of the dodos habitat led to its extinction. Carroll and the Liddell sisters visited the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, which exhibited the dried head and foot of a dodo along with a 1651 painting of a dodo by Jan Savery. Critics have asserted that the Dodo represents Lewis Carroll, an assertion that seems to be confirmed by Carroll s inscription to The Duck from the Dodo in a presentation copy of Alice for his friend Robinson Duckworth. However, the claim that Carroll chose the Dodo because it mimicked the sound of his stammer when saying the do sound in his real last name, Dodgson, seems somewhat unlikely. As biographer Jenny Woolf has noted, Carroll had a stammer, rather than a stutter, so his difficulty in speaking the beginning sounds of words resulted in an extended initial sound, not a repetition of the initial syllable do.

8 Mad Hatter? A hatter is someone who makes and sells hats. The phrase mad as a hatter was already widely used in England when Lewis Carroll created his character. One theory about the origin of this term is that hatters were exposed to significant amounts of mercury, which was then used in the production of felt. Over time, mercury exposure could cause dementia, or madness. Scholars have also speculated that Carroll s Hatter was inspired by a local furniture dealer, Theophilus Carter, whom Oxford residents called the Mad Hatter because he wore a top hat on the back of his head. Carter s contemporaries claimed he was the spitting image of the Mad Hatter of Tenniel s illustrations. The Hatter, one of the most memorable characters in Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, was not included in Carroll s original story for Alice Liddell, Alice s Adventures Under Ground. He is one of the few characters who also appeared in the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. The Hatter was further popularized in the memorable tea party scene from the 1951 Disney film Alice in Wonderland. Though the un-birthday song in this film was based on a reference in Through The Looking-Glass, it has no connection with the Hatter in Carroll s stories. March Hare? References to the odd behavior of hares during the month of March date back to the sixteenth century. Mad as a March hare, was a common phrase and familiar to Carroll s readers. Before she meets the March Hare, Alice speculates, perhaps, as this is May, it wo n t be raving mad at least not so mad as it was in March.

9 Mock Turtle? Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet? No, said Alice. I don t even know what a Mock Turtle is. It s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from, said the Queen. In England, beginning in the mid-1700s, mock turtle soup became a popular, cheaper alternative to green turtle soup. Mock turtle soup used calves heads and feet to mimic the taste and texture of turtle meat. One of England s major importers of turtles, T. K. Bellis, also sold packaged Mock Turtle Meat. The soup became popular in America as well, with both Heinz and Campbell s Soups selling canned mock turtle soup in the twentieth century. When Tenniel drew the Mock Turtle, he envisioned a creature with a turtle s shell, but with the head, tail, and feet of a calf. Subsequent illustrators followed Tenniel s lead, as did the costume designer for the 1933 film adaptation of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, in which Cary Grant played the Mock Turtle. The reference to mock turtle soup would have been familiar to Victorian readers and was compounded in the Mock Turtle s final scene, as he in a voice choked with sobs, sings a song called Turtle Soup with these lyrics: Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen! Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

10 Quadrille? A quadrille is an intricate dance, performed by four couples in a square. At the time that Carroll wrote Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, this dance was very popular in England and composers wrote music specifically for it. The Punch and Judy Quadrille shown here dates to A quadrille is composed of five parts, or figures. Each figure consists of a particular arrangement of the dancers and a series of steps. Carroll refers to the advance and set to partners. As couples approach each other, they are described as advancing. When partners face each other, take steps to the right, steps back to the left, and turn around in place, this is called set to partners. In Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon introduce Alice to the delightful spectacle of a lobster quadrille. They explain: Why, said the Gryphon, you first form into a line along the sea-shore Two lines! cried the Mock Turtle. Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on: then, when you ve cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way That generally takes some time, interrupted the Gryphon. you advance twice Each with a lobster as a partner! cried the Gryphon. Of course, the Mock Turtle said: advance twice, set to partners change lobsters, and retire in same order, continued the Gryphon. Then, you know, the Mock Turtle went on, you throw the The lobsters! shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air. as far out to sea as you can Swim after them! screamed the Gryphon. Turn a somersault in the sea! cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about. Back to land again, and that s all the first figure, said the Mock Turtle Understanding the complexity of the quadrille, with its prescribed moves for all dancers, helps modern readers understand the absurdity that Carroll intended in describing this fanciful dance among sea creatures.

11 150 Years of Alice Though John Tenniel s illustrations remain the most popular visual representations of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, countless illustrators have offered new interpretations. Without copyright protection in the United States, the first proliferation of new Alice illustration emerged in America. The first major outpouring of new editions in Britain began in 1907, when the British copyright expired. In 1907 and 1908, several new British editions appeared, most notably those by Arthur Rackham and Charles Robinson. Over the decades, illustrators have reimagined Alice in their own times. In 1929, Willy Pogany offered readers a flapper-influenced Alice, with bobbed hair and without the signature pinafore of Tenniel s illustration. Beyond Tenniel, the next most influential depiction of Alice appeared initially on film, in Walt Disney s 1951 animated Alice in Wonderland. The film and accompanying books helped establish a new visual representation of Alice, though one with many of the signature features of Tenniel s original. Disney s Alice also was inspired by the work of artist Mary Blair, who also worked on Cinderella and, later, Peter Pan.

12 Alice Around the World In the year following the publication of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll encouraged his publisher to pursue both French and German translations of the work. Carroll realized that his wordplay and extensive use of puns and parodies would make translation a difficult task. The German and French translations appeared in Carroll read and commented on both of these translations while in production. He encouraged translators to keep young readers in mind. Both translators substituted parodies of French and German poems and songs in place of those Carroll used, in an effort to retain the effect of Carroll s wordplay. As Alice has been translated and re-translated, generations of scholars have tried new approaches to capturing the spirit of Carroll s classic. Vladimir Nabokov translated the work into Russian using an approach that at times offered a literal translation but more frequently replaced Carroll s references with those that would be more compelling to Russian readers. Salvador Oliva, who translated Alice into Catalan in 1996, described choosing between rhyme and content in reproducing the poem Father William this way: The fundamental aspect for me is rhyme. Without rhyme, the poem of Father William would lose all its effect. The translator has to alter its meaning. It is unavoidable. Warren Weaver, a mathematician and Carroll collector and scholar whose collection resides at the Ransom Center, published one of the first major books about Alice in translation, Alice in Many Tongues, in At the time he documented translations into more than forty languages. Today that number is close to one hundred.

13 Translating Nonsense Alice s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, are both examples of literary nonsense. Carroll plays with language to create sentences and poems that have no real meaning though they sound like they should. Carroll s use of nonsense makes translating Alice into another language incredibly difficult. Consider the first stanza of the nonsense poem Jabberwocky from Through the Looking-Glass: Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. How would you translate Carroll s invented, or nonce, words into another language if they have no real meaning? Here are two Spanish translations; the first is by Adolfo de Alba and the second by Erwin Brea: Era la asarvesperia y los flexilimosos toves giroscopiaban taledrando en el vade; debilmiseros estaban los borogoves; bramatchisilban los verdilechos parde. Era brilligio, y los rebalosioso mocasos Giraban y Girareon en las ondabolsciabo: Todo debilirana estaban las ramianandos Y los momiasera ratianeras fuerandabando. The first translation retains some of Carroll s invented words toves and borogoves, though the pronunciation of those words varies from English to Spanish. The translations vary significantly and suggest the challenges and acts of interpretation required of any translator of the Alice stories.

14 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat! Carroll parodies popular children s poems and songs throughout Alice s Adventures in Wonderland. Many of these parodies are lost on modern readers who are unfamiliar with the source texts Carroll used. The first of these appears as Alice is puzzling about who she is, shortly after falling down the rabbit hole. Instead of reciting Isaac Watts s poem, Against Idleness and Mischief, How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower! How skillfully she builds her cell! How neat she spreads the wax! And labours hard to store it well With the sweet food she makes. Alice finds herself reciting: How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws! In this and many of the other parodies in Alice, Carroll either removes or subverts the moral lesson intended in the original. He replaces it with its opposite meaning or with nonsense offering no moral lesson at all. This practice reflects Carroll s larger effort throughout Alice s Adventures in Wonderland to parody and satirize polite Victorian society and the expectations of Victorian children s literature.

15 A Mad Tea Party Spanish artist Salvador Dalí ( ) was in his sixties when he produced this series of illustrations for a special edition of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland in The edition featured twelve illustrations and one original etching. The dream world of Wonderland was ideal subject matter for the surrealist artist, perhaps best known for his painting of melting clocks, The Persistence of Memory (1931). Long before Dalí painted Alice, French writers Louis Aragon ( ) and André Breton ( ) claimed Carroll s work as surrealist. They appreciated Carroll s subversion of the proper adult Victorian world. British surrealists also claimed Carroll as an intellectual forebear. Carroll s work continues to inspire artists working in the surrealist tradition. Maggie Taylor (b. 1961), a photographer and digital artist whose work is featured at the conclusion of the exhibition, used digital technology to create surrealist photomontages for her 2008 edition of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland.

16 Critical Response Most of the initial British reviews of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland were positive, praising both Carroll s writing and Tenniel s illustration. In December 1865, The Publisher s Circular noted, Among the two hundred books for children which have been sent to us this year, the most original and most charming is Alice s Adventures in Wonderland. By the turn of the twentieth century, Alice s Adventures in Wonderland was an acknowledged classic. A 1918 review in the American Journal of Education noted, The child who does not make the acquaintance of the immortal Alice and her Wonderland friends misses not only a real joy but also a necessary preparation for the understanding of many allusions in his later reading. What critics could not agree upon was the best age at which to read the book. A 1911 review suggested it was appropriate for lower school grades and, of course, for the nursery shelf. Over the next decades educators would recommend Alice as reading for grade levels ranging from third to sixth. By 1969, however, an American Library Association reviewer claimed, The story is a horror tale, not recommended for children, but should delight the discriminating adult. Today, Scholastic Books recommends Alice s Adventures in Wonderland for readers in grades two to five, while another educational firm suggests the book for high school readers.

17 Alice on Stage Though a fanciful, spectacular, and musical entertainment called Alice s Adventures; or The Queen of Hearts and the Missing Tarts opened in London in 1876, the first major stage production of Alice was performed at the Prince of Wales Theatre on December 23, Carroll was involved with the writing and development of the show, and he supplied additional content for it. The production, a musical dream play, was called Alice in Wonderland and combined elements of both Alice s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking- Glass. The play was revived nineteen times in London between 1888 and New stage adaptations continued to appear, with Eva La Gallienne and Florida Friebus s Alice in Wonderland appearing on Broadway in 1933 and subsequently revived at regional theaters throughout the United States. Alice remains a popular play for school groups and other amateur performers.

18 Alice on Screen Like many stage productions, film adaptations of Lewis Carroll s Alice stories often included material from both Alice s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The first of these, the British silent film Alice in Wonderland, debuted in Countless film and television versions have followed. The 1933 American film adaptation, also called Alice in Wonderland, featured an all-star cast including Gary Cooper as the White Knight, W. C. Fields as Humpty-Dumpty, Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle, and Jack Oakie as Tweedledum. The New York Times praised the film as a marvel of camera magic and staging and singled out William Cameron Menzies, the art director, as one who never disappoints, even as it was critical of many of the individual performances. Animator Walt Disney had been intrigued by Alice since the 1920s. His early films included an Alice series in which a live action actress called Alice finds herself in an animated wonderland. Disney wanted to make a feature-length film, but found it difficult to bring Carroll s word play to the screen in a coherent narrative. After several attempts, the film finally was completed in Disney promoted the film as the next in a series about great literary heroines that he had brought to the screen, including Snow White and Cinderella. The movie, however, was not a great box office success. The New York Times offered this assessment: What we are saying is simply that Mr. Disney has plunged into [Carroll s] work has snatched favorite characters from them, whipped them up as colorful cartoons, thrown them together willy-nilly with small regard for sequence of episodes, expanded and worked up new business, scattered a batch of songs throughout and brought it all forth in Technicolor as a whoppingbig Disney cartoon. The most recent major film featuring Alice appeared in Directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, the film was not an adaptation of Carroll s stories, but an extension of them following a nineteen-year-old Alice on her return to Wonderland.

19 Curiouser and Curiouser! Just as Alice had proved appealing for adaptation on screen and on stage, so too did Carroll s story appeal to the creators of various forms of visual and audio entertainment. During Carroll s lifetime, he authorized the adaptation of Alice into magic lantern slides. Though invented centuries earlier, the magic lantern reached the height of its popularity as a form of entertainment in the Victorian period. Presenters, at public presentations and in private homes, projected slides and read an accompanying script. In the 1930s a new technology, the Movie-Jecktor, allowed families to project paper filmstrips at home. Among the first filmstrips Movie-Jecktor offered were two featuring Alice. The View-Master, a new technology based on the nineteenth-century stereoscopic viewer, appeared in 1939 and was soon followed by an Alice View- Master disc. The View-Master was initially conceived for viewers of all ages, though today it is marketed primarily to children. Marketers of audio technologies also found Alice s Adventures in Wonderland a compelling source. As vinyl records became widely available, publishers began offering recordings of classic works, including the Alice stories. Today, these tactile audio-visual technologies largely have been supplanted by digital forms.

20 Through a New Lens Alice s Adventures in Wonderland continues to inspire visual artists including photographers Abelardo Morell (b. 1948) and Maggie Taylor (b. 1961). Their integration of photography with Carroll s story is a particularly apt tribute to Carroll, one of the most important amateur photographers of his era. When photographer Abelardo Morell set out to illustrate Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, he used books as objects to shape the landscape of the story. He explained, Because books belong to both the physical and imaginary worlds, I thought they might serve Lewis Carroll s tale well. Traveling to Wonderland could seem, after all, to be an experience very much like that of walking across the pages of a story like going deep into a book. His photographs engage Carroll s work and Tenniel s original illustrations in inventive and compelling ways. Maggie Taylor, a photographer and digital artist, uses Adobe Photoshop to create surreal photomontages. In her 2008 version of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, Taylor layers elements of nineteenth-century photographs and objects with contemporary images. For Taylor, The computer helps me bridge the gap between my fantasy and the real world. Taylor s integration of Victorian elements and modern digital technology is a fitting conclusion to an exhibition tracing 150 years of Carroll s story.

21 Reading Alice We hope the exhibition inspires you to read or re-read Alice s Adventures in Wonderland. When you have finished, please return your book to the shelf for the next reader. For the youngest visitors: Alice in Wonderland, A Colors Primer by Jennifer Adams For young readers: Jabberwocky illustrated by Christopher Myers The Nursery Alice by Lewis Carroll The Other Alice by Christina Björk and Inga-Karin Eriksson For the visually inclined: Alice s Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by Maggie Taylor Alice s Adventures in Wonderland with artwork by Yayoi Kusama For the historically minded: Alice s Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll The Annotated Alice with introduction and notes by Martin Gardner If you would like to continue reading at home, Alice s Adventures in Wonderland is readily available in a number of free digital formats online.

22 The Warren Weaver Collection of Charles L. Dodgson Warren Weaver ( ) was a mathematician and scientist who oversaw the natural sciences programs at the Rockefeller Foundation for nearly thirty years. He began collecting works by and about Lewis Carroll after ordering a math book by Charles Dodgson and discovering, much to his surprise, that it was a presentation copy inscribed by the author. As his interest in Carroll grew, he began to acquire translations, aided by his travel with and contacts through the Rockefeller Foundation. Weaver also began collecting important English editions, ultimately acquiring a rare copy of the suppressed first edition. At the time of the Ransom Center s acquisition of the collection in 1969, it was accompanied by a card catalog of 1,500 cards, many representing multiple items. Weaver continued to donate Carroll items to the Ransom Center for the rest of his life. Writing of this gift, Weaver explained, For this entire collection is now the property of the University of Texas at Austin and is handsomely housed there. So warm and friendly has been her welcome there, that I am entirely confident that Alice will be comfortable and happy in Texas.

23 The Byron W. Sewell and Susan Rafferty Sewell Collection of Lewis Carroll Byron and Susan Sewell placed their Lewis Carroll materials at the Ransom Center in Their collection was an extraordinary complement to the Warren Weaver collection and reaffirmed the Center as an important destination for scholars studying Lewis Carroll. The Sewell collection is expansive and includes early editions, Alice comic books, translations, ephemera, and other popular cultural representations of Carroll s stories. Among the many works in the Sewell collection are a number of parodies that use the Alice stories to lampoon social and political events. These works from the first and second world wars use Alice to try to make sense of upended societies and war-time regulation. Political pundits and cartoonists today continue to evoke Alice and the other characters in Wonderland. As the Tea Party has gained prominence on the American political scene, references to Alice s Mad Tea Party have increased as well.