Go Ask Alice

Classics. It’s not why we revisit them, but how. The huge collective agreement about what evokes our amazement and amusement, tested in every generation, is what distills them into masterpieces. The urge to revisit them is so that we can put our own time’s imprint upon them.

We have new Alice in Wonderland book versions this season, as well as the truly magical Tim Burton 3-D movie. The book was first written, illustrated and hand-lettered in his “fairy writing” by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. Later, it was reluctantly illustrated by John Tenniel, a well-known Punch cartoonist, and published in England in 1865. Interestingly, the first print run of 2,000 was shelved because Tenniel objected to the print quality; a new edition, released in December of the same year but carrying an 1866 date, was quickly printed and became an instant best seller. There have been countless versions, in many languages, of this peculiar fable of a young...