Η ΑΛΙΚΗ ΣΤΗ ΧΩΡΑ ΤΩΝ ΥΠΕΡΟΧΩΝ ΕΙΚΟΝΟΓΡΑΦΗΣΕΩΝ ΤΗΣ

The Best Illustrations from 150 Years of Alice in Wonderland

Down the rabbit hole in enchanting reimaginings.

By Maria Popova

ΠΗΓΗ: brainpickings.org

On July 4, 1862, English mathematician and logician Charles Dodgson boarded a small boat with a few friends. Among them was a little girl named Alice Liddell. To entertain her and her sisters as they floated down the river between Oxford and Godstow, Dodgson fancied a whimsical story, which he’d come to publish three years later under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland went on to become one of the most beloved children’s books of all time, and my all-time favorite.
In the 150 years since Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations and the century since Arthur Rackham’s pioneering reimagining, the Carroll classic has sprouted everything from a pop-up book adaptation to a witty cookbook to a quantum physics allegory, and hundreds of artists around the world have reimagined it with remarkable creative vision. After my recent highlights of the best illustrations for Tolkien’s The Hobbit, here come the loveliest visual interpretations of the timeless book.

LISBETH ZWERGER (1999)

As an enormous admirer of Austrian artist Lisbeth Zwerger’s creative vision — her illustrations for L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz and Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant are absolutely enchanting — I was thrilled to track down a used copy of a sublime out-of-print edition of Alice in Wonderland (public library) featuring Zwerger’s inventive, irreverent, and tenderly tantalizing drawings, published in 1999.
What makes Zwerger’s aesthetic particularly bewitching is her ability to render even the wildest feats of fancy in a soft and subdued style that tickles the imagination into animating the characters and scenes with life.



The book begins with Carroll’s prefatory poem from the book, which recounts the afternoon boat trip on which he first told the Alice in Wonderland story to the three little Liddell sisters — Lorina (“Prima”), Alice (“Secunda”), the real-life girl who inspired the tale, and Edith (“Tertia”):

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.
Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?
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.
Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast —
And half believe it true.
And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by,
“The rest next time—” “It is next time!”
The happy voices cry.
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 far-off land.

Though this enchanting edition is currently out of print, you can still find used copies online and at the library. Some of Zwerger’s prints, including one of the Alice cover illustration, are available on ArtKandy.
See more here.

ΔΕΙΤΕ ΑΝΑΛΥΤΙΚΑ ΟΛΕΣ ΤΙΣ ΑΓΓΛΟΦΩΝΕΣ ΕΙΚΟΝΟΓΡΑΦΗΜΕΝΕΣ ΕΚΔΟΣΕΙΣ ΤΗΣ "ΑΛΙΚΗΣ"

*The Best Illustrations from 150 Years of Alice in Wonderland