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  • Alice and the Reviewers
  • Elizabeth A. Cripps (bio)

Opposite the entry in his diary for 2 October 1864, Lewis Carroll with characteristic orderliness listed the press notices of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

1865
Reader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nov. 12
Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nov. 25
Guardian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 13
Publisher's Circular . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 8
Atheneum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 16
Illustrated London News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 16
Ilustrated Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 16
Pall Mall Gazette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 23
Spectator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 23
Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 26
London Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 23
Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Christmas Bookseller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dec. 25

Monthly Packet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan. 1/66
John Bull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan. 20
Literary Churchman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . May 5
Sunderland Herald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . May 25
Aunt Judy's Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 1
Contemporary Review (allusion) . . . . . . . . . . . Oct. 1

As one would expect, the list has proved to be fairly accurate and complete. There is one small slip (the Reader's review actually appeared on November 18) and there are certain omissions; in particular, there is no review later than October 1866. The disparaging review in the Scotsman of December 22, 1866, is therefore missing. We learn of it from the novelist Henry Kingsley, the [End Page 32]


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A page from Lewis Carroll's diary. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

[End Page 33]

brother of Charles Kingsley, who was a friend of Carroll: "The literary ability of The Scotsman I really cannot rank high with regard to works of fiction and fancy: who could trust a paper which said that the letter-press of Alice's Adventures was pointless balderdash!"1

Alice was published in July 1865, but the first edition was withdrawn—dissatisfaction with the reproduction of the illustrations led to a reprint—and the earliest reviews are of the second edition, which appeared in November.2 The delay was fortunate: the book caught the Christmas trade as a result.

Children's books were considered in Victorian periodicals either in general reviews such as "Current Literature" in the Spectator or as literature specifically for children in reviews such as "Books for the Young" in the Illustrated London Times. They were also included in those few magazines written especially for children, such as Mrs. Gatty's Aunt Judy's Magazine. Consequently Alice appeared with some strange companions: in the Manchester Guardian it was considered alongside Dante's "The Vision of Hell" and in the Illustrated London News alongside "The Works of the Ettrick Shepherd." During late November and throughout December the reviews, for example, "Gift Books of the Season" in the Reader or "Christmas Stories" in the London Review, naturally concentrated on seasonal books. As these review titles suggest, the appearance and presentation of the books were thought to be as important as the text to the reviewers. The Reader's review commented almost exclusively on these aspects (page size, quality of illustration, gilt edging, cover design, and color). Some hundred books were considered, each receiving a few phrases, invariably of commendation. Watts's Divine and Moral Songs was described simply as "one of the most charming of Christmas presents" and the Religious Tract Society's Our Life was praised as "very nicely got up as to its richly gilt binding and type and toned paper, the prose and poetry well selected, and the illustrations happy and well executed." Alice received more generous attention than most—two sentences of comment: "From Messrs. Macmillan & Co. comes a glorious artistic treasure, a book to put on one's shelf as an antidote to a fit of the blues; "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, with forty-two illustrations [End Page 34] by John Tenniel, sure to be run after as one of the most popular works of its class."3

It is a feature of the reviews generally that as much space was devoted to praising Tenniel's work as to discussing the merits and demerits of the text. This is, of course, partly because of the "gift book" aspect of the Christmas reviews, and partly because of Tenniel's brilliant conception and execution of the Alice illustrations. But there is also a more prosaic fact to be taken into account: the reviewers, faced with a large number of volumes to comment on, had little time to become closely acquainted with the...

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