Alices Adventures in Wonderland Illustrated by Salvadore Dali

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Disclaimer: I was given a complimentary copy of this book by Princeton University Press, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the book's first publication and it presents a very different version of Alice. I have long been a fan of Lewis Carroll's Alice books. I was very intrigued to see what Dali's illustrations would be like since his style seemed about as far from Tenniel's as you could possibly get.

These illustrations are more abstract than the familar ones of older editions, but capture the surreal nature of the text. They are eerily beautiful and hard to describe. They are a combination of gouache and ink, reminiscent at different times of cave paintings, children's drawings and botanical engravings and that essential Dali-ness. My one complaint is that there aren't very many of them, only about one per chapter.

The book includes an introduction by Mark Burstein, an expert on Lewis Carroll's work. He talks about talks about the connection between mathematician Charle's Dodgeson (aka Lewis Carroll) and Dali.

This book would probably appeal most to fans of art in general, and Dali in particular, but also to fans of Carroll's work. It's a fascinating, different look at the familiar story.

Rating: 4/5
Published: October 2015

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#Fiction
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