A rabbit with trumpet and scroll
Found servitude taking its toll
"I don't mind the work,"
He said with a smirk,
"But I don't like the hours, on the whole"
So tired on Friday that I just scrolled through some Victorian cartoon images and illustrations I really liked, and when I came to some originals from "Alice in Wonderland" I knew I'd found something that-
a) I'd like to sketch -
b) I could sketch
c) wasn't going to take forever.
"Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" have exerted a fascination over my imagination for a very, very long time. My grandfather, who died before I was born, bought a set of novels and works of fiction from the Daily Express. My mother had possession of the few novels that remained in the set when I was growing up. I can't remember all of the ones that were there, but they included "David Copperfield", "Pride and Prejudice" "Wuthering Heights" and "The Mill on the Floss" three books which I would love by the time I was studying A Level English Literature, as well as "Jane Eyre", a book I absolutely would not love when studying it for A Level. However, the only one I was interested in from a very early age was "Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass". This edition had its own illustrations, not the Tenniel originals, sadly. I didn't discover these until I was quite a bit older.
It's a strange book, isn't it? I was more taken with Looking Glass when I was little - I responded to the fact that it's based on a chess game, and Alice has an ultimate goal- becoming queen. I found Wonderland to be rather sinister - and to be honest I still think that it has something of this quality about it. Sir John Tenniel - just plain John at the time - to me brought out this quality in his illustrations for the book.
