COMMENTS

PLEASE NOT ALL COMMENTS ARE NOW DISABLED


Alice Eternal

An index of my Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass collection, including books, DVDs, audio versions, memorabilia, my own work and interesting web links.

Saturday 4 September 2010

Notice

This blog is on a temporary hiatus while I consider how I wish to continue it.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland


Ill. Robert Ingpen
Templar Publishing (2009)
192 pages

Sunday 15 August 2010

Alice' Adventures in Wonderland

Illustrated by Harry Riley, no dust jacket.

Ill. Harry Riley
Pub, Arthur Barron (1945)

Thursday 12 August 2010

Disney Alice In Wonderland

Ladybird book of Disney film.


Abridged version.
Ill. after Disney
44 pages
Ladybird (1997)

Monday 9 August 2010

Alice In Wonderland Story Box

Set of greetings cards and envelopes with a book containing some poems and songs with Tenniel illustrations.


Story Box Classics
Studio Designs (1992)

Sunday 8 August 2010

Not one I actually own

I don't currently own a copy of this but a comment on an earlier entry has led me to mention it. Here's the comment in full.

Hi, Would like to flag up our Alice in Wonderland MP3 audiobook consisting of the unabridged Alice's Adventures plus a selection of Carroll's nonsense poems and prose pieces. Entertaining narration by Oxfordshire actors. Recorded in Oxford. CD pressed and packaged in Sony factory. It was a mad project for my husband and me but worth the effort to receive positive feedback from The Times' audiobook reviewer and President of Lewis Carroll Society of North America. We are currently holding an online nonsense competition. All details and audio sample on www.storypods.co.uk. It would be great to get a mention or exchange of links. Thank you!


Happy to oblige.

Friday 6 August 2010

Walt Disney's Alice In Wonderland

Very short abridgement of AIW with illustrations from Walt Disney Film

Disney Enterprises (2003)
22 pages

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Sherlock Holmes And The Alice In Wonderland Murders

Sherlock Holmes And the Alice In Wonderland Murders
A Sherlock Holmes story with a loose Alice In Wonderland connection.


Written by Barry Day
Pub. Oberon (1997)

Saturday 31 July 2010

Bad Alice

An interesting book using Alice for inspiration.


Written by Jean Ure
Pub. Hodder Children's Books (2003)

Review

It’s impossible to review this book adequately without giving away the major plot points so if you are likely to read it -- and in spite of it being a very disturbing read I recommend that you do -- and don’t want to know in advance what it’s about then skip to the end of the review now.

Still here? Then let’s get on with it.
Bad Alice concerns the friendship between two children one summer. Duffy is a teenage boy with mild Tourette’s syndrome and Alice is the girl next door. Alice is a child that is universally agreed to be a bad sort – universally that is except for Duffy who strikes up an immediate friendship with her.
As the plot unfolds the disturbing nature of Alice’s family set up is revealed and the abusive relationship with her father is readily apparent to adult eyes reading the book if not to the adult characters. Duffy’s gradual realisation that his friend’s obsession with Alice in Wonderland masks very deep and real problems is poignant and painful to us because we have seen coming what we know he must eventually realise. Alice’s problems become most apparent through the version of Alice in Wonderland which she is secretly writing and allowing him to read. These sections are at times a little too knowing and articulate for a thirteen year old to have written but that is the only slight flaw in an otherwise brilliant but deeply disturbing book. This should be on recommended reading lists for all teenagers as the handling of one of the worst problems that exists in society is sensitive and intelligent and raising the awareness within teenagers that such problems don’t have to be simply endured must be a good thing.
Come to that raising the awareness of the problem among adults is also not a bad idea. Maybe, if enough people had their awareness raised then we could eradicate this kind of thing altogether and books like this would become unnecessary.

Final verdict. A sensitive, disturbing and above all necessary read.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Las Aventuras de Alicia

Spanish translation of combined edition with extensive footnotes in Spanish
Standard Tenniel illustratons


Translated by Ramon Buckley
Tus Libros (1999)

Sunday 25 July 2010

Alice In Wonderland Viewmaster

Three View-master reels of Alice In Wonderland


Sawyer Inc. 1952

Thursday 22 July 2010

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (Film/Book)

Film book combination containing standard Tenniel edition of AIW and the 1972 William Sterling version of the film with Fiona Fullerton.

Book

Wordsworth Editions (1993)

Film

Starring Michael Crawford, Peter Sellers, Michael Hordern, Fiona Fullerton
Dir. William Sterling
1972

Monday 19 July 2010

Alice's Journey Beyond The Moon

Sequel by R.J.Carter
Illustrated by Lucy Wright
Telos, 2004


Sequels by other hands are often tricky beasts and never more so than when, as here, presented with the central conceit that they are a “lost manuscript” by the original author. This, like other pretenders, is of course no such thing. It is a new story. The problem with it is that the pretence that it is a lost Carroll manuscript extends to a series of long footnotes explaining how the various jokes and whimsies fit into the lives and events surrounding both Dodgson and Alice Liddell. These footnotes are done in the style of “The Annotated Alice” side by side with the text. For example the footnotes to one of the poems (giving the recipe for a rather unusual pie) explain that the ingredient “wet collodian” was a photographic chemical with which Dodgson would have been familiar and the nonsense word “queechy” refers to a novel by Elizabeth Wetherell that he gave to his sister Henrietta on her twelfth birthday. The depth of research into Dodgson’s life is impressive but as a literary device it all rapidly becomes rather tiresome and it’s a good idea to read the book through and ignore the footnotes altogether until you have finished.
What, then, of the story itself? At ninety pages it’s quite a thin tale but pastiches the style of Carroll quite well. Some of the puns and jokes are good and there are quite a lot of amusing touches. The artwork while not in the Tenniel style complements the story nicely and I suspect that there are many references and subtleties that a single reading has failed to reveal to me. The main problem is that at times it tries rather too hard to be clever. References to Descartes and an exposition of Zeno’s paradox are deftly handled but seem a little out of place. The insistence on explaining some of them in those annoying Gardneresque footnotes doesn’t help. As soon as you need to explain a joke it ceases to be funny.
The story has Alice journeying to the moon through the eyepiece of a telescope and while there having the kind of adventures that she had in Wonderland and through the looking glass. The style doesn’t quite hit the mark but comes much closer than Jeff Noon’s Automated Alice* (though not as close as Gilbert Adair’s Alice Through The Needle’s Eye *). This is “explained” by suggesting that the work was written some years after the original stories, again an explanation that is necessary only because the author insists on maintaining the fiction that this is a lost story.
What of the poems and songs? Once again they are in the correct style and character and with a nice whimsy but they lack the surety of Dodgson’s metre and caused me to stumble in trying to get the rhythms right.
Final verdict? A slight but diverting dreamlike tale which would have been all the better if more attention had been given to crafting a longer story and less to the learned and mock-erudite footnotes

Friday 16 July 2010

Alice In Wonderland: 17 Alltime Favourites

Audio CD containing abridged version of AIW and various children's songs and nursery rhymes
approx 1 hour
Going For A Song (year unknown)

Sunday 4 July 2010

Almost Alice

songs inspired by Tim Burton AiW film
includes Avril Lavigne, Franz Ferdinand, Wolfmother, Grace Potter, Owl City etc
Buena Vista Records, 2010

Friday 2 July 2010

Wonderland Revisited And the Games Alice Played There

sequel by Keith Sheppard
illustrated by Cynthi Brownell
Evertype, 2009

Wednesday 30 June 2010

Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators

Letters between Lewis Carroll and his illustrators
edited by Morton N. Cohen and Edward Wakeling
Cornell University Press, 2003

Monday 28 June 2010

The Nursery Alice Notecards

Notecards

Museums and Galleries Collection, 2004

Saturday 26 June 2010

The Red Kings Dream

byJo Elwyn Jones and J. Francis Gladstone
book examining sources of Lewis Carroll's writing
(mostly speculative)
Jonathan Cape, 1995

Thursday 24 June 2010

Alice In Wonderland And Philosophy

edited by Richard Brian Davis
Philosophy book using Alice for examples
various authors
Wiley, 2010

Tuesday 22 June 2010

Correspondence Cards

British Library

Sunday 20 June 2010

Lewis Carroll

a biography by Florence Becker Lennon
Cassell and Co, 1947

Friday 18 June 2010

Wednesday 16 June 2010

The Automated Alice

sequel by Jeff Noon
illustrated by Harry Trumbore
Doubleday, 1996

Monday 14 June 2010

A New Alice In The Old Wonderland

Sequel by Ann M Richards (written and illustrated)
Originally published 1895
This edn. Wildside, 2000

Saturday 12 June 2010

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Vol 1 and 2

English translation of Japanese cartoon
Loose adaptation
Apollo Film, Vienna 1984

Thursday 10 June 2010

Alice In Wonderland

Computer game for young children
Dorling Kindersley, 2001

Tuesday 8 June 2010

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

BBC Full-cast dramatisation
Starring David Bamber, Roy Hudd and Sarah-Jane Holm
BBC Audio
1999, 2006

Sunday 6 June 2010

Bunbury: Radical Sonora

Musical album, in Spanish
Cover art and one track (Alicia-expulsada al pais de las maravillas)

1997, EMI-ODEON

Friday 4 June 2010

Alice In Wonderland

Cartoon, given away free with Daily Mail
50m
Pulse Entertainment

Wednesday 2 June 2010

Alice Im Wunderland

German audio adaptation
starring Franzika Mager, Christoph Schobsberher, Thoas Nicolai
translated by Karin Hahn and John Clark
horverlag


Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Interactive Computer Version
(Includes 4 games)
Published by Living Classics

Saturday 29 May 2010

Alice in the Country of Hearts Volume 1

Japanese Manga Variation
Art by Soumei Hoshino
Story by Quinrose
Published by Tokyopop

Thursday 27 May 2010

Alice In Wonderland

Soundtrack Album for TV version (Nick Willing)
Music by Richard Hartley
Hallmark , 1998

Wednesday 26 May 2010

The Magic Token

Variation in which Alice is accompanied on her trip to Wonderland by a modern girl, Emma.
Written by Eugene Orlando
Illustrated by Tenniel
Published by iUniverse (2004)

Sunday 23 May 2010

Alice In Wonderland/Alice Through The Looking Glass

Made for TV version
TV version of both books. (180 m)
Starring Natalie Gregory, Scott Biao, Red Buttons, Sid Caeser, Sammy Davis Jr, Roddy McDowell, Robert Morley, Donald O'Connor, Telly Savalas, Ringo Starr, Shelley Winters
Produced by Irwin Allen
Directed by Harry Harris
1985

Friday 21 May 2010

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland

Novelisation of screenplay
Novelisation by T.T. Sutherland
Screenplay by Linda Woolverton
Published by Puffin

Wednesday 19 May 2010

Alice In Wonderland

Full reading of Alice In Wonderland
4 cassettes
Read by Christopher Plummer
Published by Caedmon Soundbooks

Sunday 16 May 2010

Jack The Ripper

One of the odder theories about Jack The Ripper.

Saturday 15 May 2010

Alice In Rainforest Land

Ecologically themed sequel.
Written by Nadine Amadio.
Illustrated by Charles Blackman.
Published by Slawson Communications, 1988.

Friday 14 May 2010

Alice's Journey Beyond The Moon

Sequel.
Written by R.J. Carter.
Illustrated by Lucy Wright.
Published by Telos, 2004


Review:

Sequels by other hands are often tricky beasts and never more so than when, as here, presented with the central conceit that they are a "lost manuscript" by the original author. This, like other pretenders, is of course no such thing. It is a new story. The problem with it is that the pretence that it is a lost Carroll manuscript extends to a series of long footnotes explaining how the various jokes and whimsies fit into the lives and events surrounding both Dodgson and Alice Liddell. These footnotes are done in the style of "The Annotated Alice" side by side with the text. For example the footnotes to one of the poems (giving the recipe for a rather unusual pie) explain that the ingredient "wet collodian" was a photographic chemical with which Dodgson would have been familiar and the nonsense word "queechy" refers to a novel by Elizabeth Wetherell that he gave to his sister Henrietta on her twelfth birthday. The depth of research into Dodgson's life is impressive but as a literary device it all rapidly becomes rather tiresome and it's a good idea to read the book through and ignore the footnotes altogether until you have finished.
What, then, of the story itself? At ninety pages it's quite a thin tale but pastiches the style of Carroll quite well. Some of the puns and jokes are good and there are quite a lot of amusing touches. The artwork while not in the Tenniel style complements the story nicely and I suspect that there are many references and subtleties that a single reading has failed to reveal to me. The main problem is that at times it tries rather too hard to be clever. References to Descartes and an exposition of Zeno's paradox are deftly handled but seem a little out of place. The insistence on explaining some of them in those annoying Gardneresque footnotes doesn't help. As soon as you need to explain a joke it ceases to be funny.
The story has Alice journeying to the moon through the eyepiece of a telescope and while there having the kind of adventures that she had in Wonderland and through the looking glass. The style doesn't quite hit the mark but comes much closer than Jeff Noon's Automated Alice* (though not as close as Gilbert Adair's Alice Through The Needle's Eye *). This is "explained" by suggesting that the work was written some years after the original stories, again an explanation that is necessary only because the author insists on maintaining the fiction that this is a lost story.
What of the poems and songs? Once again they are in the correct style and character and with a nice whimsy but they lack the surety of Dodgson's metre and caused me to stumble in trying to get the rhythms right.
Final verdict? A slight but diverting dreamlike tale which would have been all the better if more attention had been given to crafting a longer story and less to the learned and mock-erudite footnotes.

Thursday 13 May 2010

Book Plates

Alice In Wonderland Book Plates

Wednesday 12 May 2010

Алиса в страната на чудесата (Alice in Wonderland/Bulgarian)

Алиса в страната на чудесата
Bulgarian Translation of Alice In Wonderland.

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland: Soundtrack

Music by Danny Elfman for 2010 Tim Burton production.
Walt Disney Records

Monday 10 May 2010

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: A New Musical

Original Cast Recording
Written by Paul Boyd
Paul Boyd Music
Green Dolphin Studios
1998

Balletmet Columbus ticket.

Balletmet Columbus ticket.
Sunday Feb 12, 2006

Sunday 9 May 2010

Little Tales: Alice In Wonderland

Miniature adaptation.
Retold by Stephanie Laslett.
Illustrated by Jenny Press.
Published by Paragon, 2001.

Friday 7 May 2010

Alice In Wonderland: A Dance Fantasy

Ballet Adaptation of Alice In WOnderland
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Music by Viktor Kalabis
Published by V.I.E.W. Children's Cultural Collection
Bonus features, synopsis, documentary.

Little Treasury of Alice In Wonderland

Six cardboard mini-volume adaptation.
Retold by Jane Caruth.
Illustrated by Rene Cloke


Published by Award Publications, 1990

Thursday 6 May 2010

Alice At The Palace

"Music Hall" adaptation of Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.
Starring Meryl Streep, Betty Aberlin, Debbie Allen, Michael Jeter
Broadway Theater Archive
82 minutes

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Alice In Wonderland

Real Audio reading of Alice in Wonderland.
Published by WOUB Centre for public media
(c) Ohio University.

Saturday 1 May 2010

Alice illustatrors

An old website linking to various other pages.
Caution site has not been updated since 1999. Links may be broken.

Friday 30 April 2010

Alice In Puzzleland

Partly a sequel, partly a book of mathematical and logical puzzles.
Written by Raymond Smullyan
Introduction my Martin Gardner
Illustrated by Greer Fitting
Published by Penguin, 1984

Tuesday 27 April 2010

The Ultimate Jabberwocky Page

The Ultimate Jabberwocky Page
Variations and translations of Jabberwocky, from Afrikaans to Welsh.

Alice In Wonderland

Alice In Wonderland
Illustrator unknown.
Published by Birn Brothers (date unknown. Possibly 1920s)

Monday 26 April 2010

Lauren Harman's Alice In Wonderland Page

Lauren Harman's Alice In Wonderland Page
Excellent site showing sample illustrations from many illustrators.

Alice In The News

Alice in the News, A National Theatre Play
Written by Charles Way.
Published by Barrington Stoke, 2004
Spiral bound paperback.