Karen Gardiner published her thesis called “A New Evaluation: The Theological Influence of F. D. Maurice on the Imaginative Works of Lewis Carroll.”
The thesis explores how the fictional work of Lewis Carroll was influenced by mid nineteenth century eschatological ideas and controversies, particularly in relation to how eternity was understood and explored by F. D. Maurice and other Broad Church theologians who were friends and acquaintances of Carroll.
There’s a new book that analyses Lewis Carroll’s works: “Design Theory, Language and Architectural Space in Lewis Carroll” by Caroline Dionne.
In both “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there”, we can find spacial challenges, like the strange rabbit hole, the chessboard-like landscape, and how Alice gets stuck when she grows. Here, Carroll plays with different understandings of space: space as a set of physical or material boundaries, or as an abstract geometry.
On November 30th, many Alice in Wonderland items (mainly books from other illustrators) will be auctioned at Potter & Potter Auctions, Chicago.
From the Potter & Potter website:
For nearly four decades, the Farbers have been “mad as a hatter” when it came to collecting everything related to Alice in Wonderland. One of their main focuses was on the hundreds of various illustrators that, since 1865, have been producing their own renditions of the characters and scenes from this popular children’s book. They also had a deep fascination for the many translations that were done including collecting one of the most important which just so happened to be the “original Alice’s copy” of Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian translation of Alice.
Other highspots of this sale include a presentation copy of Alice from Carroll to the British illustrator Richard Doyle, another presentation copy of Alice but this time from John Tenniel with one of his famous pencil sketches, a massive 6-foot prototype celestial globe from one of London’s leading globe makers that features all of the Alice characters, and many other rarities including toys, posters, art and more.
Date: 30 November 2023
More information: https://www.potterauctions.com/auctions/upcoming (no auction page yet, you may have to scroll down the page)
[edit 9 November 2023]
The catalog page is now online: https://auctions.potterauctions.com/Catalog.aspx?auctionid=1168
The auction notably includes a first edition, second issue ‘Appleton Alice’ (comprising sheets of the suppressed 1865 printing with a new title-page) together with a first edition of ‘Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there’ (Macmillan and Co, 1872) – estimated to sell for $8,000-$12,000, and an individual first edition of ‘Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there’ ($600-$800 estimate).
For collectors: a copy from the limited edition of “Sir John Tenniel’s Wood-engraved Illustrations to ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ & ‘Through the Looking-Glass'” is now for sale!
This book set was part of the library of art lover and collector José Neistein, who passed away in 2020. It is now sold by his nephew and trustee, Rubens Neistein.
In the very near future, an independent art house feature film called “The Hunting of the Snark” will be released. It is based on Lewis Carroll’s great nonsense poem.
The film makers have just released a trailer of the upcoming movie:
The book “Reflecting Alice. A Textual Commentary on Through the Looking-Glass” is a follow-up to the book “Elucidating Alice. A Textual Commentary on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, written by Selwyn Goodacre. It provides insight into the quality of Carroll’s writing skills and the narrative structure of his story.
After the book “Elucidating Alice. A Textual Commentary on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was published, it left us eagerly looking forward to its sequel. We had to wait as long as Victorian readers had to wait for the sequel to Alice’s first adventures, because “Reflecting Alice. A Textual Commentary on Through the Looking-Glass” did not appear until December 2021 – presumably not coincidentally, exactly 150 years after the original book was published.
I only happened to find out about its availability in January. Perhaps the publication was not promoted much, or the book was published later than it states on its title page. (Which, by the way, would be very much in the style of Carroll’s original, which was published in December 1871, while the title page stated 1872 – and after all, it is a book about a mirror world.)
The Dutch Lewis Carroll Society has published a facsimile of “Lize’s Avonturen in het Wonderland” – the first Dutch translation of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.
“Lize’s Avonturen in het Wonderland” was originally published in 1875. It is very much abridged (21 pages) and contains 7 enlarged and colored illustrations by Tenniel. It was the fifth translation of the story in the world, but the first one that contained colored illustrations.