Lewis Carroll drew his own Alice before John Tenniel's famous pictures existed

arts, ideas & societyThe Public Domain Review1864 · Oxford, England

Lewis Carroll drew his own Alice before John Tenniel's famous pictures existed

the gist

Before the published Alice in Wonderland had any pictures, Lewis Carroll wrote the story as a handwritten manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground and illustrated it himself with thirty-seven sepia-ink drawings. The original story came from river trips on the Thames at Oxford, where he improvised tales for Alice Liddell and her sisters. When he published, he replaced the family details and chose the Punch cartoonist John Tenniel as illustrator, whose images became the familiar look of Wonderland. The manuscript was sold by Alice Liddell in 1928 and later given to the British Library in 1948.

so what

Carroll's drawings show that the text and images of Alice were conceived together, which is why the word-picture pairing feels so natural. The manuscript's survival also shows how a children's gift turned into a national treasure.

fun fact

Carroll was also a talented photographer who kept a darkroom in his Oxford college rooms.

more on this

background

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (also known as Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a little girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the original edition.

The novel received positive reviews upon release. It has become one of the best-known works of Victorian literature; its narrative, structure, characters, and imagery have had a wide influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. It is credited as helping end an era of didacticism in children's literature, inaugurating an era in which writing for children aimed to "delight or entertain". The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. The titular character, Alice, shares her name with Alice Liddell, a girl Carroll knew; scholars disagree about the extent to which the character was based upon her.

From Wikipedia: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗

see

David Revoy, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

John Tenniel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lewis Carroll, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

key facts

Founded: 1862
Published: 1865
Author: Lewis Carroll

Facts: Wikidata (CC0)

Image: The Public Domain Review

source: The Public Domain Review ↗

historyThe Public Domain Review1909 · United States

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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