Alice

Tenniel's Alice:

"Slothrop is just settling down next to a girl in a pre-war Worth frock and with a face like Tenniel's Alice, same forehead, nose, hair [...]" (p.247)

Over his lifetime, Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) was responsible for more than 2000 cartoons in the comic magazine, Punch. Nevertheless, it is for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice books that he is best remembered. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1864, and Through the Looking Glass in 1871. Tenniel is said to have taken on illustrating Alice's Adventures in Wonderland because there were plenty of animals in it and he liked animals. It turned out to be the most disagreeable task of his career. Carroll was a tyrant about every aspect of his book leading Tenniel to reportedly exclaim to an other illustrator, "Dodgson is impossible! You will never put up with that concetited old Don for more than a week!" Tenniel long refused to do the illustrations for Through the Looking Glass, but finally relented. Even then there was particular fuss by Carroll over the illustration for 'Jabberwocky'. That illustration, which was to have been the frontispiece for the book, was buried in the text at the response of various 'married lady friends' to a circular from Carroll. After finishing with Through the Looking Glass, Tenniel did no more illustrations. He later wrote that "...with Through the Looking Glass, the faculty of making drawings for book illustrations departed from me, and, notwithstanding all sorts of tempting inducements, I have done nothing in that direction since."