Alice, curiouser and curiouser edited by Kate Bailey and Simon Sladen
V and A Publishing, 2020. ISBN: 9781838510046.
(Age: All) Highly recommended. Described as 'a mind-bending journey
into the story of Wonderland', this sumptuous hard cover book has
been published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, an exhibition exploring the origins,
adaptations and reinventions over the years of Lewis Carroll's
original stories of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through
the Looking-Glass.
The first section of the book is a collection of beautiful and
intricately detailed illustrations by Kristjana S. Williams
that children and adults alike will enjoy exploring. They are
colourful scenes from the Alice stories decorated with plants and
flowers, strange creatures, timepieces and hidden mirrors to search
out.
Then follows the story of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) and his
creation of the fantasy stories for his young friend, Alice,
daughter of Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church, Oxford, while
passing the time on rowing expeditions with her and her sisters.
Those stories of strange other worlds with nonsense verse and absurd
dialogue questioning reality and perception were to become a source
of delight for both adults and children, and an inspiration for many
later adaptations and interpretations in literature, art, film,
theatre, science and popular culture.
This book collects together iconic images from the early
illustrations by John Tenniel to surrealist art, to the fashion
statements of Vivenne Westwood, Viktor and Rolf, and Galliano for
Dior. An allegory of Alice's adventures has been used as an
introduction to the quantum world, and in a reference to her quest
to discover more about our universe, her name was given to the
'Large Ion Collider Experiment' at CERN, the European Organisaton
for Nuclear Research.
The legacy of Alice in Wonderland lives on in so many ways;
this book provides a wonderful insight into the amazing impact those
early stories have had, and is a volume that many will find much
pleasure in perusing.
Helen Eddy