Reviewed by:

• The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books by Michael Hancher
• Joanna Karlgaard (bio)

Michael Hancher’s The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books provides a detailed examination of John Tenniel’s engaging illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871). The author’s close study of these iconic and much beloved visualizations of the Alice story, published and reprinted in many editions, reconstructs important elements of their creation and examines the publishing practices that enabled them to be so broadly circulated.

The first edition of Hancher’s book, published in 1985, was reviewed by Morton N. Cohen in this journal (VPR 21.1 [1988]: 35–37). In this second edition the original chapters have been updated and expanded, incorporating new scholarship on Tenniel and Carroll along with archival source material that was not previously included. This material most notably comprises the original wood blocks of the Tenniel illustrations engraved by the Dalziel brothers, rediscovered in a London bank vault in 1985 just as the first edition was being published; electrotypes from the archives of Macmillan Publishing; and significant caches of wood-engraved proofs, many annotated by Tenniel.

Hancher addresses the significance of the Alice books along with the intertwined reputations of their author and illustrator: “For a mix of reasons, Lewis Carroll, like Alice herself, has become a creature of popular legend. And yet Tenniel’s own contribution to the books is probably as well-known as Carroll’s—perhaps more widely known, for there must be thousands of persons (children and adults alike) who are familiar with reproductions of some of the illustrations, despite never having actually read the text. In a ghostly way, Tenniel retains something of his original precedence over Carroll” (2). With this precedence in mind, Hancher traces the evolution of Tenniel’s illustrations for the Alice books. Hancher offers a critical assessment of Tenniel as an illustrator and examines his prolific output as chief cartoonist for Punch as well as other illustrative work. Hancher finds that “his drawings, including his illustrations for the Alice [End Page 639] books, tended to conserve and renew the imagery of the recent and notso-recent past” (9). Early chapters explore Tenniel’s visual language, the replication of imagery from his own designs for Punch (for example, John Bull becomes Tweedledum and Tweedledee), and the influence of Carroll’s original illustrations to Alice’s Adventures under Ground in his 1864 hand-lettered and illuminated gift manuscript to Alice Liddell. Hancher concludes that “it is very likely that Tenniel did see the Carroll illustrations, and furthermore, that they helped shape his drawings for the book” (39). Exploration of Tenniel’s appropriation of imagery from contemporary artists, such as John Leech, John Everett Millais, George Du Maurier, and Augustus Leopold Egg, as well as old masters, including Quinten Massys, Albrecht Dürer, and Salvator Rosa, further documents his ability to layer and combine source material. Hancher’s observations are astute, bringing together a range of visual borrowings. His inquiry would benefit from comparing Tenniel’s appropriations with the works of other illustrators of the 1860s who similarly made clever use of assimilated source material. Further contextualizing this practice would help to deepen understanding of the richness and complexities of Victorian discourses on copying and imitation in the visual arts.

Readers of Victorian Periodicals Review will find of special interest six new chapters in this edition that provide a larger framework for understanding the development and materiality of the Alice illustrations. Focusing on technical processes and archival evidence, these chapters address the transformation of Tenniel’s drawings to printed images through the wood-engraving process; the production of electrotype copies of the wood blocks; the commercial printing of the illustrations and related problems; coloring of the illustrations, including Tenniel’s selection of colors for the Alice illustrations in 1890 as well as Fritz Kredel’s in 1946; practices of re-engraving, such as the creation of entirely new wood blocks by Bruno Rollitz in 1932; and an assessment...

审核人：

• 迈克尔·汉彻（Michael Hancher）对“爱丽丝”书籍的Tenniel插图
• 乔安娜·卡尔加德（生物学）

迈克尔·汉彻尔（Michael Hancher）的“向“爱丽丝”书着的天尼尔插图”详细介绍了约翰·坦尼尔在刘易斯·卡罗尔的《爱丽丝梦游仙境》（1865年）和《穿越玻璃》（1871年）中的引人入胜的插图。作者仔细研究了爱丽丝故事的这些标志性和备受喜爱的视觉效果，并在许多版本中进行了转载和重印，重新构造了其创作的重要元素，并研究了使其广泛传播的出版实践。

汉顿（Hancher）的书的第一版于1985年出版，莫顿·科恩（Morton N. Cohen）在该杂志上进行了评论（VPR 21.1 [1988]：35-37）。在第二版中，对原始章节进行了更新和扩展，纳入了有关Tenniel和Carroll的新奖学金以及以前未包括的档案资料。这种材料最引人注目的是由Dalziel兄弟雕刻的Tenniel插图的原始木块，于1985年第一版发行时在伦敦的一个银行保险库中重新发现。Macmillan Publishing档案中的电子版；以及大量的木刻样张，其中很多都是由Tenniel注释的。

汉彻（Hancher）阐述了爱丽丝书的重要性以及其作者和插图画家的交织名声：“由于种种原因，刘易斯·卡洛尔（Lewis Carroll）和爱丽丝本人一样，已经成为了一个广受欢迎的传奇人物。但是Tenniel自己对书籍的贡献可能与Carroll的著作一样著名-也许更广为人知，因为必须有成千上万的人（无论儿童还是成年人）熟悉某些插图的复制品，尽管从未真正使用过。阅读文本。Tenniel以一种幽灵般的方式保留了其最初的优先于Carroll的地位”（2）。考虑到这一优先顺序，汉彻（Hancher）追溯了Tenniel为爱丽丝（Alice）设计的插图的演变图书。汉彻（Hancher）对Tenniel作为插图画家进行了批判性评估，并考察了他作为Punch首席漫画家的丰富作品以及其他插图作品。汉彻发现，“他的绘画，包括他对爱丽丝 [End Page 639]书的插图，倾向于保存和更新最近和不太近的过去的图像”（9）。早期的章节探讨了Tenniel的视觉语言，复制了他自己为Punch设计的图像（例如，John Bull成为Tweedledum和Tweedledee），以及卡洛尔的原始插图对《爱丽丝地下历险记》的影响在他1864年给爱丽丝·利德尔（Alice Liddell）手写和照亮的礼物手稿中。汉彻（Hancher）得出结论：“坦尼尔（Tenniel）很可能确实看到了卡洛尔（Carroll）的插图，此外，他们还帮助他为书画了画图”（39）。探索Tenniel对来自John Leech，John Everett Millais，George Du Maurier和Augustus Leopold Egg等当代艺术家的图像的挪用，以及包括Quinten Massys，AlbrechtDürer和Salvator Rosa在内的老大师的作品，进一步证明了他的能力分层并合并源材料。汉彻（Hancher）的观察很敏锐，汇集了一系列视觉上的借口。将Tenniel的拨款与1860年代其他插图画家的作品进行比较，他的询问将受益匪浅，他们同样巧妙地利用了同化的原始资料。

《维多利亚时代期刊评论》的读者会特别感兴趣，这本期刊中有六个新章节，它们为理解爱丽丝插图的发展和实质提供了一个更大的框架。这些章节集中在技术流程和档案证据上，探讨了通过木雕工艺将Tenniel的图纸转换为印刷图像的过程。生产木版的电子版；插图和相关问题的商业印刷；插图的着色，包括Tenniel为Alice选择的颜色1890年的插图以及1946年的弗里茨·克雷德尔（Fritz Kredel）的插图；重新雕刻的方法，例如布鲁诺·罗里兹（Bruno Rollitz）在1932年创作的全新木刻；和评估...