The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll

What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations? I agree--especially conversations. And the conversations in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are some of the most famously fabulous confabulations. (Don't mind me, I just like how that word sounds). These pictures, by illustrator John Tenniel, were very important to Lewis Carroll and his story.

It's been many years since I've read these stories, and I am surprised to find them both profound and hilarious. (But then, I am not the same person I was yesterday.) It now seems obvious that Alice's shifting size, discomfort, and confusion simply describe being--a child. By the way, Alice is seven and a half years old, and she is always the voice of intelligence and innocence in the rather insane, more adult world around her.

The sequel story, Through the Looking Glass, has a darker, more serious tone, in my opinion. I know that the first time I read this, the fact that there is a chess game on the entire time was lost on me. Alice begins as a pawn, and that train ride she takes at the beginning is her first move--a big one, since pawns are allowed to move two spaces in their first turn. And the way the queens move so fast (making Alice run and get out of breath) corresponds to the way a queen is allowed to move. Near the end, the white knight who rescues her, and is so clumsily falling off his horse, left and right, is demonstrating his L-shaped moves, as well. After her encounter with the knight, Alice has only to cross over one more brook before reaching the eighth rank promotion to queen. She wakes up after capturing the red queen.

Note: evidently, back in Lewis Carroll's day, most chess sets were red and white, instead of black and white. I don't know much about chess, so this would be what I notice. :)

Another thing lost on me was the famous conversation with the white queen, when she says, The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day.' I took for granted that that was pure silly nonsense, but it was actually meant as a pun. It is a rule of Latin grammar (which I don't remember learning myself in Latin class) that "iam" means "now," but only in past and future. In the present, the word would be "nunc." (i and j are interchangeable in Latin.) Evidently, this quote became so famous that it became an expression for asking for too much, as in "I suppose you want jam on that."

What was not lost on me the first time was the poems. The Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter, especially. And Alice's conversation with Humpty Dumpty, and how he translates some of the words in the first poem is fun. (He's quite the egg head.)

There is so much to love, here--and I know it's all been said before. I am very glad that I picked it up again!