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THE LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY ^^^^fl^^^H OF NORTH AMERICA

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Number 24 February 1986

Florence Becker Lennon, we belatedly report with much sadness, died on Dec. 18, 1984 in Boulder, Colorado. Ms. Lennon, who was born in New York City on Feb. 20, 1895, was one of the pioneers in focusing critical attention on the life and the works of Lewis Carroll through her book Victoria Through the Looking Glass which was published in 1945 and revised and expanded in 1962 as The Life of Lewis Carroll Ms. Lennon was a distinguished poet and for many years broadcast from New York a popular radio program on the enjoyment of poetry. She was a founding member of the LCSNA and on the occasion of our tenth anniversary meeting at Princeton University she sent a verse greeting to us all which was published in Knight Letter No. 20.

FALL 1985 MEETING IN AUSTIN, TEXAS

Our long and eagerly awaited meeting at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC) of the University of Texas at Austin took place on Nov. 9, 1985. After a splendid lunch at the Faculty Club we began our afternoon with a tour of the HRHRC photography gallery and a demonstration of a project for digitizing photographs for computer storage and retrieval. Since several Carroll photographs, manuscripts, and books were on display the hour passed all too quickly.

By 2:00 p.m. we had all gathered in one of the HRHRC lecture auditoriums for our general meeting. The President opened the meeting by thanking the HRHRC and its Director, Dr. Decherd Turner, for inviting us to Texas, for providing such an excellent exhibit for us, and for being so solicitous about our needs. A moment of silence in memory of Florence Becker Lennon was observed, and then our Secretary, Maxine Schaefer, read the minutes from the last meeting which were accepted without revision.

Dr. Sandor G. Burstein, immediate past President of the LCSNA, began the program by reading to us a letter from Byron and Victoria Sewell who are in South Korea. Byron had begun making arrangements with Dr. Turner for our meeting several years ago and deeply regretted his inability to be with us. In his letter he shared with us some of his thoughts about the illustrations he is producing for a new Korean edition of Alice. Byron had kindly allowed us to make copies of a few of the illustrations for distribution as a keepsake. The goal of the new translation is to place Alice in a Korean milieu, for example, in place of the Gryphon Byron drew a Phoenix — a common figure in Korean mythology and iconography — and in place of the Mock Turde a Mock Turde-Boat — the turde boat was an armored vessel invented by the Korean national hero Admiral Yi Sun-Shi in 1592 to defend his country against a Japanese naval attack!!

Dr. Roy Flukinger, Curator of the Photography Collection at the HRHRC, addressed us next in a talk entitled "Through Carroll's Camera: Looking at the Photographs of Charles L. Dodgson." Drawing on his expert knowledge and slides from the vast holdings of the HRHRC, Dr. Flukinger placed Carroll in the tradition of Victorian amateur photography (five of Carroll's albums and additional original prints and negatives are in the HRHRC), traced the development of Carroll's portrait studies, examined his placement of his subjects, and finally commented on Carroll's landscape photographs. From his technical discussion of the wet collodion process to the final stage of Carroll's cropping of his prints. Dr. Flukinger was a most informative speaker.

With our next two speakers, we turned from Carroll's photography to his literary works. Mr. Robert N. Taylor, Head of the Rare Book Cataloging Department at the HRHRC and compiler of Lewis Carroll at Texas (an excellent catalog of the Warren Weaver collection and related Dodgson materials, including manuscripts and photographs, at the HRHRC) gave us a brief scholarly account of his discoveries about the provenance of a particular Wonderland Stamp Case and its relation to a copy of Eight or Nine Wise Words

About Letter Writing, both items in the Weaver collection. Mr. Taylor well conveyed the rarified kind of excitement bibliographers are privileged to enjoy. Mr. John Kirkpatrick, Head of the Manuscript Cataloging Department at the HRHRC, next intrigued us with his witty and scholarly account of his discovery of the corrected galleys for Carroll's treatise on squaring the circle. This work, presumably prepared by Carroll as a response to numerous inquiries from circle squarers, was previously an uncataloged item in the Weaver collection.

After a short break we reassembled for a lecture by Dr. Selwyn H. Goodacre, editor of the British journal Jabberwocky and a renowned Carroll enthusiast, collector, and scholar. In the first half of his lecture, which was entided "A New Look at An Easter Greeting," Dr. Goodacre explored the theological meanmg of the work with its Resurrection symbolism and quotations from the Old Testament and Wordsworth and he also discussed the personal religious significance he thought the work possessed for Carroll. During the second half of his talk he established the chronological sequence of early editions of the Easter Greeting by paying meticulous attention to breaks in the border lines on the cover of the pamphlet, the amount of blank space between paragraphs, slight changes in the wording of the text, and identification of the type faces used in various editions. Through a combination of typographical evidence and the results of chemical analysis of the paper of one "edition" Dr. Goodacre was able to identify a forgery of the Easter Greeting!

After Dr. Goodacre 's lecture we were very fortunate to hear from Mr. John Wilcox-Baker, another speaker who, like Dr. Goodacre, had traveled from England to address us. Mr. Wilcox-Baker of the Lewis Carroll Society of Daresbury is the moving force behind the establishment of the Lewis Carroll Birthplace Trust. With the help of some fine color slides of Daresbury, Mr. Wilcox-Baker explained to us the purpose of the Trust. Present plans include the restoration of the old Sessions House (or court house) and an adjacent building in the center of Daresbury village. After restoration, these buildings will serve as a local meeting place for Church and community organizations and become, it is hoped, not only a Carroll visitors' center but also a center for Lewis Carroll studies, with a permanent exhibition based on Carroll's life and work. The Daresbury society has already placed a plaque on the site of Lewis Carroll's birthplace, the old parsonage building which burnt down long ago. Anyone who desires more information about the Lewis Carroll Birthplace Trust should write to John Wilcox-Baker, Coombe Bank Cottage, Snatt's Road, Uckfield, East Sussex, TN22 2AN, England.

The lectures concluded with Ms. Lisa Bassett, a doctoral student in English at the University of Texas, speaking about the Sewell collection of Carroll books and ephemera. The collection, begun in 1970 and deposited in the HRHRC in 1984, is extremely broadbased and includes numerous foreign language translations of Caroll's books and diverse other materials broken down into some 48 categories. In many respects, the collection complements the Warren Weaver collection. Ms. Bassett discussed the major categories of the Sewell collection and bought with her a number of items for us to examine.

The President then again expressed thanks to Dr. Turner and the HRHRC for their kindness and generosity in hosting our meeting. For your Editor, one of the most moving experiences in a wonderful afternoon was watching a digitized Carroll photograph materialize on a video display terminal: Carroll's creativity as a photographer fused with elements of his lifelong professional discipline — mathematics .

THE PRINTED PAGE:

Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature by Humphrey Carpenter has been published by Houghton MiflQin Co., $16.95. The book is an offspring of the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature by one of its co-authors. Mr. Carpenter explores the lives and times of Carroll, Kingsley, MacDonald . . . and others up to Barrie and Milne. In his chapter "Alice and the mockery of God" the author suggests that Carroll could mock religion while Dodgson certainly could not, and that the Alice books really "parody religion." An interesting thesis, but as the old English coroner's juries would hold "not proven."

The Lewis Carroll Handbook is available from The Scholar's Bookshelf, 51 Everett Dr., Princeton, N.J. 08550 for $18.95 plus postage and handling.

Harlan Ellison's collection of short stories entitled Ellison Wonderland has been reissued by Bluejay Books ($6.95). On the cover, author Ellison is depicted "perched caterpillar-like on a mushroom" — (Amanita muscaria??) — "offering a chunk of dreams in one hand and nightmares in the other."

James Michener notes in his "The Collector — An Informal Memoir" that when he was working in Japan he met Charles Tutde, a member of General MacArthur's staff and a descendant of a New England book shop family. Tuttle, it appears, would scour the Kanda district for Japanese books on three subjects: whaling, Edgar Allen Poe, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Dargaud Editeur, 12 Rue Blaise Pascal, Neuilly-sur-Seine 92201, France, released an Alice. This is a hard-bound comic strip book, with Alice getting more and more voluptuous as the brief story unfolds. Most of the time Alice is naked and quite obviously matures rapidly. The drawings seem to be by Riverstone, and although the text by Mandryka seems fairly close to the original story, the drawings don't seem to bear much relation ... a postscript to the text seems to promise further volumes of the adventures. Not for the young or prudish. Dargaud has an oflfice in New York if you want a copy of the book.

Dargaud Editeur has also brought out a standard edition of Alice's Ad\entures in Wonderland (ISBN 2-205-02386-1) in decorated boards with black and white illustrations by Blanc-Dumont. Translator is not identified.

Michael Hancher's book The Tenniel Illustrations to the "Alice" Boohs is available from Ohio State University Press, 1050 Carmack Rd, Columbus, Ohio 43210, $17.50 in paperback, $45.00 in cloth. Professor Hancher spoke to us on this topic at our Spring 1981 meeting at Harvard University's Houghton Library.

Michael Hague's marvelous new illustrations for AAIW have just been published by Holt, Rinehart, & Winston ($14.95). The style is half-way between Arthur Rackham and S. Michelle Wiggins, but they are quite charming, not frightening, and a pleasant addition. Perhaps the designer. Marc Cheshire, felt an ancestral feline influence? Anyway, the print is large and clear, the paper glossy and strong, and the whole production a delight.

Logos, a bulletin published by the College of Liberal Arts at the Univ of Texas at Austin for Spring 1985, contains "The Texas List of Unrequired Reading." The literature (un)required books for sophomores include the Alice books, Hamlet, and Moby Dick.

Art Buchwald's column on book blurbs was recently reprinted nationwide. His version of a paperback "Alice in Wonderland" promotion says: "A young girl's search for happiness in a weird, depraved world of animal desires. Can she ever return to a normal happy hfe after falling so far?"

Peter Pauper Press of White Plains, New York, has re-released their edition of the Alice books in a nice boxed set.

A sequel to a successful fictional work is difficult enough for the original author to write and almost impossible for another author to carry it off even half as well. Gilbert Adair's Alice Through the Needle's Eye (New York: E.P. Dutton, 186 p. $11.95) is more successful than the camel in getting through the eye of the needle but, alas, in spite of this sequel's considerable verbal wit Carroll's spirit is absent. The illustrations by Jenny Thome are Neo-Tenniel and rather nice.

Donald Thomas' Mad Hatter Summer (New York: Viking, 1984. 310 p. $16.95), first noted in KL 20, is quite another story, though just a story. This detective yarn of sorts is based on imagined consequences of Carroll's penchant for photographing his young female sitters in their favorite dress. Some Victorian color and a not altogether unsympathetic portrayal of Carroll.

Looking Glass Logic: Adventures in Formal Logic is available from the Perfection Form Company, 1000 North Second Avenue, Logan, Iowa 51546 for $3.90 (postage and handling included).

Part three of the bizarre Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew in the Oz-Wonderland War Trilogy has been issued by DC Comics $2.00. Seldom has a conflation of plots, for which the Roman literary critics used the Latin word "contaminatio," been attempted on such a scale as this. The third part of the trilogy includes an essay by E. Nelson Bridwell entitled "Oz, Wonderland, and Me."

Continental Historical Society's Queen Victoria's Through the Looking-Glass, has not yet appeared. Has a glitch been discovered in the program analyzing the use of the word "but"? CHS can be reached at 4444 Geary Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94118.

During a routine check last October of material stored in the Covent Garden branch of the National Westminster Bank in London, a Macmillan employee named Paul Trotman discovered a pair of identical locked boxes one of which was labeled simply "Alice." With the assistance of Michael Wace, Macmillan 's publications director for childrens' books, he forced the locks and discovered in good condition the 92 original boxwood engravings of Tenniel's illustrations to the Alice books made by the Dalziel brothers. From the blocks Macmillan reportedly will produce a limited edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Loohing-Glass this year.

SHOPPING GUIDE:

A boxed set of the Limited Editions Club Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass signed by Mrs. Hargreaves and in good condition is for sale by Ms. Barbara Shulgold, 90 Fair Oaks Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94110. Asking price: $725.00.

The 1985 Smithsonian Institution gift catalog listed a "whimsical garden rabbit" made of terra-cotta and approximately two feet tall for $72.00. According to the catalog "Alice in Wonderland would address him as The Mad Hatter and the Victorians would have taken a fancy to him right away." Definitely not.

Computer Graphics' 1986 calendar has a computer colored Mad Tea Party for its November picture. ISBN 0-933860-49-8, available at your stationery store or from the Golden Turde Press, 1619 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94709. US $8.95, Can $12.00.

A cassette tape of Dinah Shore's 1948 AAIW broadcast has a new introduction and a date of 1983 for a re-issue. $6.98 by Metacom, Inc, P.O.Box 11041, Mmneapolis, MN 55411. #S121.

The Smithsonian's Holiday Catalogue offers Christopher Plummer's records or cassettes of Ahce's Adventures for $29.95 plus $2.55 shipping. Four records, cat # 1808. Tapes: 1809.

Two sets of Robin and Nell Dale's handcarved and beautifully painted Through the Looking Glass chess sets were advertised by Saks Fifth Avenue for $6,000 a set. A tad more than other offers for the same item from a limited edition of thirty sets.

A series of new dolls, including The New Alice in Wonderland Rag Doll, The Plush "Kitty" Cheshire Cats, and The March Hare are available from Alice Joy Frank Enterprises, Inc., P.O. Box 1013, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 07632. Details on request.

The Mad Hatters Tea Party stretch gloves with Alice, the Cheshire Cat, and two other Wonderland characters displayed in colorful knits on the four fingers are available from: Darla Doolittle, Pier 17, South Street Seaport, New York, N.Y. 10038. $8.99.

The Wonderland Christmas tree ornaments offered by Trifles of Dallas, Texas, appear to be Taiwanese copies of the excellent Japanese ornaments made by the Company of Friends some years ago. The set of twelve ornaments was available from Triffles, P.O. Box 819075, Dallas, Tex. 7562-0050. $25.00.

Nieman-Marcus' Christmas Catalog offered vinyl adaptations of Faith Wick's porcelain wonderland dolls. Item 98A is the Mad Hatter, $142 plus $5.20 postage and handling; 98B is Ahce at $110 plus $4.85; and 98C is the White Rabbit at $120 plus $4.95. All are fairly Tennielesque and 16-17" tall. Mail orders from P.O. Box 2968, Dallas, Texas 75221-9950.

Books on Tape, Box 7900, Newport Beach, CA, 92660 has just released under the category of CHILDREN'S LITERARY ABRIDGE- MENTS (!), an unabridged 2-cassette recording of Alice in Wonderland. Read by Flo Gibson "in its entirety," it sells for $19.50.

KINETIC ARTS AND EXHIBITS:

LCSNA member Skip Strand has produced a lengthy commentary on the video "Don't Come Around Here No More" by Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers. The video begins with an approximately 20-year old Alice climbing up a mushroom to a sitar-strumming figure who pushes her back down the mushroom and onto a series of incidents based, in a mad sort of way, on the A/ice books. At the climax Alice turns into a cake which the Mad Hatter slices and just as he puts a slice in his mouth, Alice screams. A frightening vision.

Irwin Allen's two-part, four-hour musical version of the two Alice books, broadcast by CBS television on Dec. 9 and 10, 1985, was a disaster. Carroll's stories were reduced to insipid permutations on the theme of "a child's problems growing up." Natalie Gregory, the not incompetent nine-year-old cast as Alice, smiles and frowns her way through Wonderland and Looking-Glass adventures until her mother invites her in the end to have tea with the grown-ups. She survives the pangs of growing up without ever experiencing adolescence. A catalog of Hollywood stars acts as well as a catalog usually does. Steve Allen's vaudeville tunes, alas, were inferior to Carroll's poems. But some actors, like Karl Maiden in the role of the Walrus, did a creditable job, and stayed close to the original text! Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of the Allen version is the monstrous Jabberwock (referred to repeatedly as the Jabberwocky!), which resembles a godzilla-like creature, and in true fairy tale fashion is slain by, of course, a White Knight. Lewis Carroll, one senses, would have objected.

LCSNA member Dan Singer drew the cartoon, published in KL No. 21, making gentle jabs at the then proposed Irwin Allen television production of the Alice books.

Salvador DaU's bronze statue of Alice (1975, 71/2" H) was exhibited in the "Memories of Surrealism" show at the Alex Rosenberg Gallery, 20 West 57th Street, New York, from Nov. 1 through Dec. 7. The figure of Alice, according to Spotlight magazine, is based on an image that Dali had created in engravings he made for Paul Eluard's Nuits Partagees in 1935.

The Museum of Modem Mythology, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 features advertising icons. The oldest major artifact is a mechanized Buster Brown store display from about 1911. It shows Buster and his dog, Tige, with revolving characters from Alice in Wonderland.

Vince Collins' X-rated animated cartoon called "Malice in Wonderland" is aptly titled.

Dreamchild, a film directed by Gavm Millar and written by Dennis Potter, is a splendid entertainment. In this well photographed film with a coherent, though fictionalized, plot and subplot we find the aged, real Alice looking back upon her relationship with Mr. Dodgson. Mrs. Hargreaves, at the beginning of the film, is on the Cunard liner Berengaria en route to New York where she is to receive an honorary degree at Columbia University on the centenary of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. She is played with much wit by the Australian actress Coral Browne. Instead of being accompanied by her son Caryl, as was the case, Mrs. Hargreaves has a young female companion upon whom the subplot hinges. Once in New York she makes several promotional endorsements as "Alice," aids the romance of her young companion, and, most importantly, comes to understand her relationship some 70 years ago with Mr. Dodgson. In flashbacks to her life at Oxford where she met Mr. Dodgson, Alice is played by the coy but ever so charming Amelia Shankley — by far the best Alice in recent years. Jim Henson's Creature Shop produced splendid versions of Griffin, Mock Turtle, March Hare, and Dormouse, though your editor found the Mad Hatter a bit too sclerotic. A fiction, yes, but of those that have been offered in the past few years this film is in spirit and on many facts the least objectionable fiction.

Disney Channel Magazine, July 1985, had a cover story and many small items to promote attention to the Channel's feature film of the month, the Disney Alice in Wonderland, which was broadcast ten times during the month. The magazine also contained an Alice trivia quiz and an offer for a popcorn container with the Tea party scene for decoration!

Charles Ware's exhibit of Alician (and miscellaneous) Fantasy, paintings, drawings, and graphics was held at the Potrero Branch of the San Francisco Public Library from October 8-3 1st. Mr. Ware continues to offer discount prices for his marvellous works to LCSNA members. For more information write to 127B Arkansas Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107.

CARROLLIAN COMPUTING:

3-2-1 Contact reviews Windham Classics' Alice In Wonderland computer game in the Dec. 1985 issue.

Steve Capps' Through the Looking Glass game for Apple computers is reviewed in A + Magazine, Oct. 1985.

MEMBERS' QUERIES:

Joel Birenbaum asks: Does anyone have any information about: TTLG, illustrated by Davis, 1910; AAIW and TTLG illustrated by Prittie; and AAIW and TTLG illustrated by Collison.

Sandor Burstein asks: Does any member know the whereabouts of the precious-stone Tweedle brothers pictured in the book Masterpieces from the House ofFahrege by A. von Solodkoff (New York: Abrams, 1984).

Your Editor asks: Is there any interest in a book trading column in the Knight Letter!

MEETINGS:

Spring 1986 Meeting: Apr. 26 at the Donnell Library, 20 W. 53rd Street, New York City, program details soon. David Del Tredici's "Child Alice" will be performed at 3:00 p.m. at Carnegie Hall on Apr. 27.

With thanks to all our contributors, especially Earl Abbe, Alice Berkey, Joel Birenbaum, Mark Burstein, Sandor Burstein, P. Colacino, Ross Heath, Joyce Mines, L. Posner, Skip Strand, Nancy Willard — and everyone else.

The Knight Letter is the oj^cial newsletter of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America and is distributed free to all members. It is edited by August A. Imholtzjr., in cooperation with the Society's Editorial Board. Subscriptions, business correspondence and inquiries should be addressed to the Secretary, The Lewis Carroll Society of North America, 617 Rockford Road, Silver Spring, MD, 20902. Submissions and editorial correspondence should be addressed to August A. Imholtzjr., Editor, The Knight Letter, 1 1 935 Beltsville Drive, Beltsville, MD, 20705.

Lewis Carroll Society of North America 617 Rockford Road Silver Spring, MD 20902

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