Alice in Beeland

Alice in Beeland by Lillian Elizabeth Roy.

Illustrations by Julia Greene.

Published by Cupples & Leon, 1919.

Hardback, no dustjacket.

Four black and white full page illustrations, with plenty of smaller drawings of Alice and her bee friends scattered throughout text.

Little Alice Wells is exploring her garden when she spies Bombus, a bumblebee, and follows him to overhear him conversing with Madam Zumm and a young bee named Buzz. They give her a special nectar which enables her to enter the Bee world, where she learns much about Bees and their life and society.

Evertype re-issue available on Amazon if you want a read: Alice in Beeland: A Tale Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland

Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek:  Sunbeam Toy Books 2nd Series.

Published by F. Warne & Co.

Elsie goes into the woods to play Hide and Seek, where she meets Alice, Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Illustrated by Yayoi Kusama

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Illustrated by Yayoi Kusama, who has said ”I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland.”

Published by Penguin Classics, Feb 2012. First edition hardback.

ISBN: 978-0141197302

Kusama has suffered from hallucinations that fill her vision with spots since she was a child- possibly as a reflection of her abusive mother’s spotted kimono. The illustrations in the book are full of spots and dashes and repetitions my favourite is the mass of doodled eyes covering a page illustrating the trial.

Kusama has also lived with mental illness her whole life; she eventually checked herself into the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill in 1973 and resides there permanently.

I presume this has been released to coincide with her exhibition at the Tate Modern

Available on Amazon: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama (Penguin Classics)

Anna Gaskell

Anna Gaskell- photographs by Anna Gaskell, text by Thom Jones and Nancy Spector.

Published by powerHouse Books, 2001. First edition hardback.

ISBN: 1576870693

Two of Gaskell’s photographic series (Wonder and Override) are based on a loose re-interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Both included in this book.

From the publisher:

Anna Gaskell’s first monograph showcases the artist’s famed photographic series and rarely seen drawings. Through such diverse references as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and 1970s horror films All About Eve and Carrie, Gaskell plumbs the strangeness of growing up female in a haunting and provocative style of photography.

Anna Gaskell was born in Iowa in 1969. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a B.F.A. in 1992. She received an M.F.A. from Yale University in 1995.

Some of the photos here…

Available on Amazon: Anna Gaskell

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 26,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Fantastic Alice

Fantastic Alice: New Stories from Wonderland edited and introduced by Margaret Weis, an American fantasy author and joint creator of the Dragonlance game world.

ISBN-10: 0441002536

Published by Ace Fantasy (Ace Books); first edition paperback (1995).

A collection of seventeen (rather uneven) short stories inspired by Alice: the titles are rather more interesting than the stories themselves, including:

Muchness (Jody Lyn Nye)

The Rabbit Within (Gary A. Braunbeck)

Who Killed Humpty Dumpty (Mickey Zucker Reichhert)

I’m not the only one who is unconvinced:

From Publishers Weekly:

The current spate of themed, written-to-order anthologies leaves us awash in mediocrity; Fantastic Alice, in which 17 authors rework material by Lewis Carroll, is only a partial exception. Only Bruce Holland Rogers in the touching “A Common Night”-the best story here, despite an unconvincing close-illuminates what he borrows. He makes intriguing connections between Carroll and Emily Dickinson, and his verse is impressively clever. Several stories bring Carrollian characters to the real world; the best is Peter Crowther’s eerie, disturbing “Conundrums to Guess,” in which the Red Queen shows up (with an ax), but it’s undeveloped and rushed. Lawrence Watt-Evans, Jane M. Lindskold and Esther M. Friesner bring to reality the Cheshire Cat, the Dormouse and the Duchess’s pig-baby, respectively, with some cleverness and imagination. Most of the stories that put characters into versions of Carroll’s worlds, though, fail to one degree or another. The late Roger Zelazny contributes turgid and violent mythopoeia, Janet Pack a whimsy-slaying and sloppy “It was all a dream-or was it?” cliche; Mickey Zucker Reichert’s and Connie Hirsch’s takeoffs are flat-footed and laborious. While the writing here is generally professional and there is some cleverness throughout, too often we feel we’re seeing an old-time star spliced into a low-budget remake.

Shame really- a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Bought on abebooks, but available on Amazon: Fantastic Alice

Alice’s Adventures Under Ground 1964

Alice’s Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll

This edition published by University Microfilms Inc., Ann Arbor, Mi, 1964.

Hardback in original clear cover with slipcase. Really rather a pretty edition.

According to the British Library:

This manuscript – one of the British Library’s best – loved treasures – is the original version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, the pen-name of Charles Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician.

Dodgson was fond of children and became friends with Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell, the young daughters of the Dean of his college, Christ Church. One summer’s day in 1862 he entertained them on a boat trip with a story of Alice’s adventures in a magical world entered through a rabbit-hole. The ten-year-old Alice was so entranced that she begged him to write it down for her. It took him some time to write out the tale – in a tiny, neat hand – and complete the 37 illustrations. Alice finally received the 90-page book, dedicated to ‘a dear child, in memory of a summer day’, in November 1864.

You can read the full text and see the pictures on their site.

This is the original version of the Mouse’s Tale:

…and this is the version in Wonderland:

Available in various editions on amazon, but I don’t see this particular one on there…

Bought in Quintos for a tenner. Bargain.

 

Illustrated by Harry Rountree

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: illustrated by Harry Rountree.

Published by Collins, date not known, but I think 1925. Small hardback book, no dustjacket.

Harry Rountree  came to London from New Zealand in 1901. He was 23 years old when he arrived, and he initially struggled. However, by the time he illustrated Alice (in 1908) he was a success. He re-visited Alice in 1925.

I bought this for a fiver as I like the Jabberwock who looks like a rabid guinea pig…

Emblemland

Emblemland: John Kendrick Bangs, illustrated by Charles Raymond Macauley. Also known as Rollo in Emblemland.

Published in 1902 by R.H. Russell, New York. First edition hardback, no dustjacket.

Inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: a boy named Rollo falls asleep and finds himself in “Emblemland”, a strange country peopled with symbols and icons such as John Bull, Uncle Sam, the Owl, the Stork, Puck, Mr Punch, Father Time and Cupid.

Cupid describes his land as “the home of all Emblems…. Emblems are signs and symbols. I’m an Emblem, because I am the symbol of love; Uncle Sam is the symbol of the United States, and John Bull is the symbol of England, and the Owl is the symbol of wisdom….”

John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922) was born in New York, and was an author, editor and satirist. Charles Raymond McCauley (1871 – 1934) was a newspaper cartoonist, published in the New York Daily Mirror.

New printing available from Evertype: Rollo in Emblemland: A Tale Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 199 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 274 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 50mb. That’s about 5 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was September 14th with 335 views. The most popular post that day was Alice in Wonderland Card Game.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were en.wordpress.com, facebook.com, flickr.com, stumbleupon.com, and en.search.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for alice in the country of hearts, alice in wonderland disney, the nursery alice, alice in wonderland graphic novel, and lewis carroll.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Alice in Wonderland Card Game February 2010

2

Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland February 2010

3

Alice illustrated by Philip Gough February 2010
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4

Alice in Wonderland (Graphic Novel Adaptation) February 2010

5

Alice Websites March 2010
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