For many collectors, the act of cataloging the collection can be an essential part of the pleasure. Caterina Morelli’s blog Alice in Wonderland is a great example. In her native Italian, Morelli painstakingly documents her extensive collection of Carroll editions; as she puts it, “every post is an index card of a book.” Each card starts with an evocative description of the edition, followed by detailed information about the illustrator, publisher, and text – even the dimensions and the construction of the book are recorded. The cards are organized by illustrator.
When she told me about her blog, Caterina mentioned that some day she would like to translate it into English. Perhaps someone reading this blog is an Italian-English translator and an Alice fan? Would you like to help with her project? What nicer way could there be to brush up on your Italian?
A science writer, a mathematician, and a professor of English walk into a library… no, it’s not an unpromising joke, it’s a very promising-sounding multidisciplinary event taking place in Los Angeles on February 22.
As part of Visions and Voices: the University of Southern California Arts and Humanities Initiative, three very different intellects will be discussing Wonderland and the Mathematical Imaginary. The trio consists of Australian science writer Margaret Wertheim, who you may have seen crocheting a coral reef during a TED lecture; Francis Bonahon, a professor of mathematics at the USC Dornsife College and a specialist in hyperbolic geometry and quantum topology; and Jim Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Chair in English at the USC Dornsife College and specialist in Victorian literature, culture, criminality, lunacy, and perversion.
The discussion will be held at the historic Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library and will be followed by an “experimental play/workshop” where, it is promised, “participants can make and play with absurd mathematical objects.” The event will run from 11am – 1pm and admission is free and open to the public.
The organizers are the same folks who run the Wonderland Award, an annual competition that encourages new scholarship and creative work related to Lewis Carroll. The deadline for entries this year is April 2 — we’ll be sure to remind you again closer to the time.
Would you take lessons in business management from the Mad Hatter? Charles Jennings, British “thought leader” and learning and performance consultant thinks that might not be such a bad idea.
“Alice looked back once or twice, half hoping they would call after her: the last time she saw them they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot”
Many [learning and development] people struggle with the challenge of engaging and enrolling business managers in employee development. Trying to wedge them into a place they don’t really want to be. More…
The post is the last in a series of three which uses Alice’s adventures to illuminate strategies for effective learning in the workplace wonderland. Previous posts covered “The Lobster Quadrille for Learning and Development” and topical advice from the Cheshire Cat.
Imagine this… You are tucked up in bed and have a brilliant idea that must be written down. It’s dark, it’s late, and bedside lights have not been invented yet. What do you do? If you are Lewis Carroll you invent an entirely new system of writing – a card template of square holes, and a square alphabet to fit inside. Problem solved!
Any one who has tried, as I have often done, the process of getting out of bed at 2 a.m. in a winter night, lighting a candle, and recording some happy thought which would probably be otherwise forgotten, will agree with me it entails much discomfort. All I have now to do, if I wake and think of something I wish to record, is to draw from under the pillow a small memorandum book containing my Nyctograph, write a few lines, or even a few pages, without even putting the hands outside the bed-clothes, replace the book, and go to sleep again. – Lewis Carroll, Letter to The Lady magazine in October 1891
A nyctograph, reconstructed by Noah SlaterThe Square Alphabet
In 2005, LCSNA-member Alan Tannenbaum built a square alphabet font and transcribed and produced a limited edition of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground – some of you may be proud owners of the rare “Square Alice.” Now, for the first time, a square alphabet edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been published by Evertype and is for sale on Amazon. Below is an example of the text – it’s the passage that begins “‘Are you content now?’ said the Caterpillar,” though you may need a light on to read it.
"Are you content now?" said the Caterpillar.
The edition includes a forward by Alan Tannenbaum and an introduction by publisher Michael Everson on the challenges of the typography. Very little else has been written about Carroll’s nyctograph, but closely related devices may lie all around you – Carroll’s invention prefigured the types of text-entry systems used for tablet computers by 100 years. His own square alphabet has even been cited as inspiration for a unistroke text entry method designed for people with sight or motor impairments.
If you can’t help but try to back-transcribe the passage above (I couldn’t), don’t forget about punctuation. It seems letter characters all have a large dot in the top left of the square, while punctuation characters have a large dot in the lower right.
.If you were wondering what to listen to in your car as you travel between Cut Bank, Montana, and McNab, Alberta (about a 105 minute drive, depending on traffic at the border), how about downloading Lewis Carroll’s mathematics book The Game of Logic, read as an audio book and free on iTunes?
This work is a part of the Lit2Go collection, a collaboration between the Florida Department of Education and the University of South Florida College of Education. Lit2Go is dedicated to supporting literacy teaching and learning by providing access to historically and culturally significant literature in K-12 schools.
They also have a complete audio book of Symbolic Logic, if you’re planning a longer drive. If you’d prefer to read The Game of Logic as a digital book or online, here it is free in many formats at Project Gutenberg.
COLOURS FOR -------------
COUNTERS |5 | 6|
___ | x |
| | |
See the Sun is overhead, |--y-------y'-|
Shining on us, FULL and | | |
RED! | x' |
|7 | 8|
Now the Sun is gone away, -------------
And the EMPTY sky is
GREY!
___
The Publisher’s Weekly blog PWxyz ranked The 5 Books that Inspire the Most Tattoos, finding Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the top 5. Their online research seems to be thorough, even if the methods aren’t scientific: “We spent an untold number of hours combing the Internet’s two most extensive literary tattoo sites: Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos and The Word Made Flesh, then cross-checking the most frequently occurring tattoos with Google searches and Google image searches, all to get to the bottom of what books inspire the most tattoos and why.” Lewis Carroll’s book was beat out only by… Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, only because of the popularity of the phrase “So it goes.” So it goes.
2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Alice has inspired the most varied collection of tattoos of any book. Its wide cast of characters, quotes and images are all represented: the Cheshire Cat, the Dodo, the White Rabbit, and the Caterpillar all have fans out there. Out of the quotes, “We’re all mad here” was the most commonly occurring. Credit Alice‘s popularity among the tattooed to the fully-realized world Carroll created, and for tone specific to its story. More than any other book on this list, you’d be likely to get an Alice tattoo because it simply looks great and is hyper-intricate. Tim, who has an image of the Cheshire Cat on his shoulder blade, said on Contrariwise: “The Cheshire Cat is the only creature in Wonderland who uses logic. Though his words often seem mocking and bizarre, his process is always logical. To me the Cheshire Cat symbolizes the fragility of the border between genius and insanity.”
Alice in Wonderland is increasingly popular as a wedding theme on reality television and in life (one “credit crunch” bride has even described it as recession-defying). As ever, some couples go further than others. This week many blogs have been reposting these pictures of newlyweds Erin and Matt – a couple with a vision, to be sure. You can see many more pictures at BitRebels.
In the summer of 1864, Alice Liddell (Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for Alice in Wonderland) and her two sisters, Lorina (who inspired the Lory) and Edith (who inspired the Eaglet), posed for up to 10 hours a day while the distinguished English artist, Sir William Blake Richmond, created one of his most famous paintings, called The Sisters. The painting of the three Liddell sisters set against the background of the Great Orme, Llandudno’s famous mountain, is one of the highlights of the Tate Liverpool’s Alice in Wonderland exhibition. Sir William Blake Richmond painted the portraits of the most prominent people of the day. The Sisters, well received by the art critics of the day, was regarded by Richmond as a milestone in his career. Sir William had this to say about Alice Liddell:
“Little Alice, to whose pretty face and lovely coloring no reproduction can do justice, is seen on the right in profile, peering at the big volume on her sister’s lap.” [continue reading…]
