Alice's Many Adventures - Part the Second

If all that jumping around through time has got you confused and looking for a way out I think you had better spend a little while with our next Carrollian tome.

Navigation with Alice

Frank Debenham was a Cambridge don who, during World War II found himself teaching navigation to young cadets, eager to learn but frustrated that the lack of materials meant that they could only learn principles in abstract terms without being able to properly put them into practice. To this end Debenham began to relate many of his teaching practises back to the varied characters in Alice in Wonderland, something he could be reasonably sure that cadets would have heard of, and if not, that they would be more likely to engage with, hence the book where we find Alice dancing Latitude Quadrilles with the Mock-Turtle, debating the markings on globes with the Dodo and learning about the use of altitude and horizons in a protracted smoking session with the Caterpillar.


















A charming and interesting book, that doesn't rehash the original story but uses it as the platform for its own message. The illustrations are by Anne Scarisbrick, who was only 16 at the time.













Malice in Kulturland

Frank Debenham's take on the Alice story was born out of his experiences in WWII, but Alice has a history with global conflict going back as far as 1915 and the publication of Horace Wyatt's Malice in Kulturland. Illustrated by the curiously named W. Tell the book follows Alice's journey through Kulturland, a reverie inspired by her dreaming through boring homework assignments (what else) this time based on studying the political structure of Western Europe at the turn of the 19th Century.




She meets many of the characters that appear in the original Alice, all modified to meld with real politicos from the books she has been reading. Most notable being the pseudo Jabberwocky, the Kaiserhog:


Twas dertag and the slithy Huns
Did sturm und sturgel through the sludge ;
All bulgous were the blunderguns,
And the bosch bombs outbludge.

Beware the Ulsterman my son-
The jaws that bite at kin and kith;
Beware the Carsonclan, and shun
The frumious Ridersmith.






Clearly this is piece of barely concealed anti Geman propaganda, that reveals the depths of the author's predjudice in references not only to the Hun (fairly standard at the time) but also to Ulstermen, Edward Carson and later in the text even takes on the suffragettes for a bit of a kicking. The full text and images can be found here.

Alicia in Terra Mirabili - Ludovici Carroll

From teutonic connections to Latin links, there have been translations of alice in nearly every language under the sun. Clive Harcourt Carruthers' Alicia is a prime example. Very straightforward, Alice in Latin with the original Tenniel illustrations, what more could you want?




Alice in Wonderland - various illustrators

When it all comes down to it, many twists have been added to the tale by a variety of authors throughout the ages however, Carroll's original prose is unlikely to be bettered. The same might be said of Tenniels illustrations, so well do they suit the style of the prose and the nature of the era in which it was written. If writers are comfortable reworking Carroll's text, then illustrators are chomping at the bit to fit their images to his original words as the plethora of styles displayed below will show.













Cover illustration and plate of the eat me drink me episode by Margaret W. Tarrant.