Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

Images from the finest ever editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books? I have been reviewing the University of California Press trade printings of the Pennyroyal Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, but the original editions, made at the Pennyroyal Press in West Hatfield, Massachusetts, in 1982, are something to behold. The additional volume in each slipcase holds standalone prints of the woodcut engravings by Barry Moser. Limited to 350 copies each, they were expensive then, and alas, remain expensive now; at least we get a good many images from within from the times they appear on rare book dealers’ sites. But upper class parents, is there any better literature to introduce your children to? I sincerely hope the owners of these objets d’art aren’t keeping them behind glass, but bring them out, to introduce their girls to Lewis Carroll, and to the arts of bookbinding and woodcut engraving at their best. What follows is how I’ve learned to read Alice, to keep in mind to fully appreciate the story, and then, my collected posts on both books. — How to Read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Many of the scenes Alice walks into are like the opened pages of a pop-up book: looked at from directly in front, they appear wondrous and fantastic; but, apart from the assertions of locals, there is no evidence that they are other than setups, when looked at even slightly differently. Many of the characters Alice meets are what we would call pathological liars; they become very uncomfortable when Alice points out that their statements don’t add up. While Wonderland has what we would consider magical causes and effects at work, and some unknown causes, from the individual’s perspective, cause and effect are still at work: meaning, choices still have moral weight. Some characters are less confused than others, and are more like ordinary people; they are at their most reliable when instinct, as to preserve onself or one’s young from being eaten, leaves no room for fancy. Wonderland, as a whole, is a menagerie of human folly; going along with its false promises leads to disappointment, disillusionment, and loss of identity. Wonderland is, metaphorically speaking, a trial some little girls pass through on the way to adulthood. Alice is able to see through Wonderland’s deceit because she is morally good, precociously intelligent, and childishly innocent: in her, these qualities are a unity, not in conflict, which is why she is Carroll’s dream-child. Alice’s intelligence is shown in her inner dialogue, both verbal and mental; it is this which allows her to catch when her memories have been corrupted, and to get a lead on where to rediscover the truth. Wonderland is a Christian allegory for this world: as Alice awakens from Wonderland as from a strange dream, so the world we know will pass away in turn; as insubstantial and unreal as life in Wonderland is next to the waking world, so is this passing life next to eternal life in Heaven. Even in a corrupted and passing world, you can find the right path by seeking beauty for its own sake. Like the visible tokens and invisible graces from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, memories of an adventure through Wonderland will stay with and enrich a woman through the whole of her life. — How to Read Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There: Alice’s journey Through the Looking-Glass, while like bathing a child it can be unpleasant or hard to bear up under, is given her for her betterment. The mechanics of Looking-Glass Land are a metaphor for the indirectness and roundaboutness with which adults often pursue their goals. The characters Alice meets there have embraced adulthood and reason as best they can, but mostly aim to use their knowledge and strength for worldly gain, particularly by exploiting the weak and gullible; however, the character the least ready to navigate the adult world is an exception, as he, like the author in real life, tries to show Alice the right way. Looking-Glass Land is marked by the adult life divisions between work and play; characters even become different people when they are at work, and change back when they go on break or go home. The courses of characters’ lives, including those who most think themselves in charge, are predetermined by received verse, but they largely have no awareness of this nor ability to change their fate, because they do know know themselves. Alice is consciously childishly innocent, highly intelligent, and morally good; but she is unaware of the external mirror of these inner qualities, her physical beauty, which affects how others, including the author, see and feel about her. Alice’s love for beauty, her chief personality trait over and above her faculties, is like pursuing like, shows the honorableness of her intentions, and definitively sets her apart from characters who see the physical world as mere raw material for making a profit. Alice’s journey and overcoming of trials is a girl becoming a woman’s cognate for a boy’s coming-of-age quest as he becomes a man. Alice’s story began as the story of the real Alice Liddell and her sisters, and ends as the story of every little girl who lives Alice’s adventure as her own in hearing or reading, by identifying with the heroine. The Alice stories are a shared dream, with the author and every reader for all time, chiefly little girls. Receiving the magic words of the story into her heart, the reader can preserve herself from the lies and wrong attitudes that make adults unhappy, prepare her for meeting death calmly, and for waking into eternal life. — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: 1/9 Introduction to the edition, Barry Moser, PennyroyalPress. 2/9 How not to read Alice, and then how to. What James R. Kincaid gets wrong. Alice’s high intelligence and character. Christian nature of the story. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116214916250979525 3/9 More on Alice as a Christian story. “All in the golden afternoon.” Carroll’s express intent. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116218003930865619 4/9 Beginning and ending. Alice’s moral goodness, and unconscious beauty. “Reverie of Alice’s Sister”: Alice’s sister, and Lewis Carroll see her. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116223798738093475 5/9 Alice seeks the garden: her love for beauty, purposiveness, and rationality. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116233540299797557 6/9 Alice confronts nonsense: at the Mad Tea Party, and in the Queen of Hearts’s Garden. Decisions in Wonderland still consequential. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116252044263321327 7/9 Alice pauses to ponder: the Pigeon, the raven and the writing-desk. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116257590560959992 8/9 With the Gryphon and Mock-Turtle. Education that does not foster critical thought only renders learners miserable and servile. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116280186767510794 9/9 “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” Dead leaves fallen on her lap. Alice dispels the dream by speaking the truth. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116297219192671843 — Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There: 1/13 Introduction to the edition. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116353435471282678 2/13 Notes on the chess game. The players’ motives. Who is in charge? Earnest game or Civil War reenactment? Moser’s artistic choices. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116359485069025541 3/13 The Christian and didactic character of the work spelled out. Alice at home with Kitty. Her imagination. Her ideas about how to interpret Looking-glass events. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116366398128088283 3.5/13 Two additional favorite engravings. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116366450655834818 4/13 ”Jabberwocky”: a loose allegory for Alice’s own quest. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116379723670762251 5/13 Alice’s blush. She meets the Red Queen. The Red Queen’s (rat) race. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116393414683369971 6/13 The Gnat tempts Alice with loss of identity. Alice forgets, then remembers who she is. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116410194297888054 7/13 Tweedledum and Tweedledee: the two-party system, law. Alice is offered, and rejects, partnership in crime. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116422078538374480 8/13 Who dreams the dream? Who the Red King is, and how he shares the dream with the readers. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116429715171719112 9/13 Alice is most herself seeking beauty for its own sake. She’s unaware of her own beauty, that it won’t always last. Others are different people at work and in time off. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116444498458560902 10/13 Before the fool of fools, Humpty Dumpty. His ridiculously extensive learning, coupled with shallowness, cynicism, lack of self-knowledge. Why does he fall? https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116455833924841706 11/13 The White Knight tests Alice with a poem. “The Aged Aged Man”, and why Alice does not cry. Friendship stays her ambition. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116469999564850548 12/13 How Alice becomes a queen (becomes an adult). https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116489518879562709 13/13 “I ca’n’t stand this any longer!” Queen Alice recognizes an elaborate, intentional snub, and responds rightly. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116501443824059470 #LewisCarroll #BarryMoser #ThroughTheLookingGlass #AliceInWonderland #PennyroyalPress #Pennyroyal #woodcutting #woodcut #engraving #illustration #art #dreams #fantasy #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #rarebooks #objetsdart #books