As my posts Nine Astonishing New Illustrators, Nine More Astonishing New Illustrators, and Yet Nine More Astonishing New Illustrators have received much welcome in the Carroll-collector community, I felt it was time to do another. Once again I thank Instagrammers @semperluxus, @neverenoughalicebooks, and @chimerainwonderland for finding many of them!
Adriana Peliano’s “reimagining” is a delightful, nearly wordless, romp through Wonderland. She is a brilliant AI artist, and the journey is light and lovely, symbolic and surreal. You can get a signed hardcover (US$35) by emailing her or a Kindle edition.
Pavel Pepperstein’s idiosyncratic and gloriously oversize (12 × 15 inches; 30 × 38 cm) Алиса в Стране Чудес (AW) came out from V–A–C Press in 2020. His playful gestures break through common sense, mixing Russian traditional icons, avant-garde Russian art, and images from Western pop culture. ISBN 978-5907183070.
SNL’s Festrunk Brothers’ “wild and crazy” are the most appropriate adjectives for a large-format Алиса в Стране Чудес и в Зазеркалье (AW & LG) illustrated by Nikolaj Vatagin (Krasnyj Parokhod, 2015). With lightly excerpted texts, the artist’s imagination takes off with eccentric drawings and photographs of his sculptures in a kaleidoscope of inventiveness. Warning: completely un-PC, with nudity and racial stereotypes. Currently available from Ruslania in Finland. ISBN 978-5914870642
Kent David Kelly has more than 130 books to his credit; several are editions of Carroll’s books (his Snark is out and Looking-Glass is in the works). This volume is large, thick (230 pages), lavishly illustrated with 145 AI-generated images, and ends with with pages of notes called “secrets,” incorporating biographical and Victorian data, not to mention, it must be said, his own imagination. ISBN 979-8388826787, available from Amazon.
Martina Peluso’s lighthearted, Botero-esque illustrations to AW first came out in 2017 in a large hardback “Illustrated Classics” edition by publisher Miles Kelly (978-1786176769). With LG added and reformatted into a small “Mini Classic,” it is now available in Russian (978-5041062316) from Amazon in English (978-1786176769)
David Esslemont’s fine-press Jabberwocky came out in an edition of forty copies in 2020. The linocuts are mostly color “reduction linocuts,” i.e., printed from the same block cut several times. The calligraphic text was drawn with a broad-nibbed pen on linoleum blocks that when printed render the letters in reverse, just as Alice found them. The images are stunning and the box it comes in contains a mirrored sheet so one can read the text. Sort of.
Illustrator Minji Kim’s small two-volume set from Indigo, 2014, in Korean (AW 978-89-92632-12-6, LG 978-89-92632-98-0) showcases her lovely, delicate art, often with unusual perspectives. Wonderland (978-8992632799) is also available in English.
The text of Alice’s Adventures on the London Underground is pretty much like every other pastiche you’ve ever read, but the engraved illustrations were truly stunning. It’s available as a trade paperback and also in a deluxe boxed edition with twelve signed etchings from Blackwell’s in the UK.
Maxim Mitrofanov first illustrated Wonderland and Looking-Glass for Rosmen in 2010. Both books contained the full text and gorgeous, detailed colored illustrations on each page (his LG was reviewed in KL 85:51). Now, over a decade later, Mitrofanov revisits the Alice books, this time for AST in abridged retellings with ingenious, sumptuous 3D pop-ups. From Ruslania: Алиса в стране чудес (AW) 978-5171105334; Алиса в Зазеркалье (LG) 978-5171229870.
