CARROLL, Lewis [Charles Lutwidge DODGSON]. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Wellington, New Zealand. A.H. & A.W. REED Pty Ltd. 1982

4to.; publisher’s tangerine boards lettered gilt to spine, orange pictorial endpapers, in tangerine pictorial jacket illustrated to both panels; pp. [vii], 8-128; with a total of 51 illustrations, almost all in full colour, most full-page, some half-, or three -quarter page, including four dramatic double page spreads; an all-but-fine copy, with one minor horizontal crease to top edge of lower cover, otherwise fresh, crisp, and seemingly unread, without ownership marks or inscriptions.

First New Zealand edition illustrated by a giant of Australian art, issued simultaneously by A.H. & A.W. Reed in New South Wales, Australia. Charles Blackman (1928-2018) is an acknowledged major contributor to the development of Australian art in the twentieth century and examples of his work are held by museums worldwide including the Tate Gallery in London, the Australian National Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  His work is known for its Modernist, surreal, and dreamlike qualities, with a disquieting undertone of vulnerability and menace, which chimes perfectly with this particular text.

Blackman’s “Alice” became a personal project for the artist, whose wife, writer Barbara Blackman (née Patterson), was losing her sight. Thus the artist was introduced, via a talking book, to Carroll’s cult classic, but remarkably had never seen Tenniel’s original illustrations for the work. This unusual circumstance, which probably placed him in a unique relationship with the text, allowed him to develop his own creative interpretation of the ever-shifting, and disorienting, story, without visual preconceptions and explore an uncertain and mysterious new world in parallel with his wife. Blackman later commented:

“I was absolutely thrilled to bits with it … and it seemed to sum up for me at that particular moment my feelings towards surrealism, and that anything could happen.  The cup could lift off the table by itself, the teapot would … pour its own tea … The world is a magical very possible place for all one’s dreams and feelings.  One is completely outside of reality … This was sparked completely off by Barbara’s influence on my life.”