"Alice and her Cat Kitty" — Illustrations for Through the Looking Glass by John Tenniel

Alice and Kitty

Sir John Tenniel

1871

Wood-engraving by Dalziel

Illustration for the first chapter of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

For commentary, see below; mouse over the text for links.

Student assistants from the University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore, scanned this image and added text under the supervision of George P. Landow.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the site and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. ]

Commentary by Ray Dyer.

This second outing in the opening chapter of Through the Looking Glass for the young heroine’s cat, provides an even closer parallel for Carroll’s repeated attention to the same material — and associations — in the opening chapter of the earlier Alice in Wonderland.

On a different note, the cosy middle-class Victorian furniture-family-child setting was not a particular strength for artist-illustrator John Tenniel, who has here delicately excelled himself to reach a new level. Carroll would subsequently look around for new illustrators, including Henry Holiday (1839-1927), whom he had first met socially in college in July 1870. His valued assessment of the above two artists, made in January 1874, was that under certain conditions, “the grace and beauty of the pictures [by Holiday] would quite rival Tenniel” (Diaries 6: 124n, 192 and 314).

Related Material

Bibliography

–––––. Lewis Carroll’s Diaries. The Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Vol. 6 (1868-1876). England: The Lewis Carroll Society, 2001.

Cohen, M. N. and Wakeling, E. (eds.). Lewis Carroll and His Illustrators: Collaborations and Correspondence, 1865-1898. London: Macmillan, 2003.

Last modified 15 April 2021