A free exhibition exploring the legacy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland opened at the British Library on Friday 20 November, Art Daily reports. Recognising the enduring power of Lewis Carroll’s original story and the first illustrations by John Tenniel, the exhibition explores how the story of the girl who went ‘down the rabbit hole’ continues to inspire and entertain 150 years after it was published.
One of the British Library’s most loved treasures, Lewis Carroll’s iconic handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, and an entry from Carroll’s diary detailing the ‘golden afternoon’ on 4 July 1862 when he first told the story to Alice Liddell and her sisters, provides the starting point for the exhibition.
The exhibition, which takes place in the Library’s Entrance Hall exhibition space, goes on to explore the different ways in which generations of illustrators, artists, musicians, filmmakers and designers have interpreted the story and characters over the past 150 years.
New illustrated editions of the story often mirror the period in which they were created, from Mabel Lucie Attwell’s endearingly rosy-cheeked Alice of 1910 and Charles Robinson’s art nouveau style, to Salvador Dalí’s surrealist lithographs inspired by Carroll’s story and Mervyn Pearke’s darker vision of Wonderland born out of his experiences during the Second World War
