The Blog of the LCSNA
Sugar with your tea? One grain or two? Bas Bleu, online retailer of gifts and accessories for readers, is selling this miniature tea set decorated with quotes and illustrations from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland ($55).
The teapot is 2 1/2 inches high, which is perhaps a little undersized for a truly mad tea-party, but may yet appeal to a small friend or caffeine-loving teddy bear.
Tonight is the world premier of Exposure Time by Kim Merrill at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, New Jersey. Is this the first time a work of drama has centered on Charles Dodgson the photographer? Merrill’s play won the 2009 Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award. Here is some of the blurb from the press release, “Alice Through the Camera Lens”:
While Johnny Depp portrays the Mad Hatter on movie screens around the world this winter, Lewis Carroll, the conflicted creator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, will be on stage at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, fighting passionately to be known not as a
children’s author but as Charles Dodgson, the greatest portrait photographer in the British Empire. Standing in his way is the larger-than-life and now tragically forgotten Julia Margaret Cameron, who was the Annie Leibovitz of her day and a constant thorn in Dodgson’s side. The real Alice will be there as well, trying to sort out her complex relationship with Dodgson, along with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the Victorian Idol of a society that worshiped its poets like rock stars. The world premiere of Exposure Time runs from February 11 through March 21, with an Opening Night performance and High Tea on Saturday, February 13.[…]
A magical journey into the literary heart of Victorian England, Exposure Time is a perfect play for young teens and above. Schools are invited to contact NJ Rep to discuss booking special discounted matinee performances that include lesson plans and post-show discussions with the actors.
Discounted previews are Thursday and Friday, February 11 and 12 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Regular performances are Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m., with selected Sundays performances at 7 p.m. as well as Thursday and Friday matinees by prior arrangement for students and other groups. Tickets are $40; $35 for previews; $60, opening night; $36 for seniors and students (except opening night); with discounts for groups of ten or more.
There is a review and interview with Ms. Merrill in the Red Bank Orbit here. Tickets can be purchased online here.
If you were previously unaware, there is a grammy award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. The 2009 recording of Lewis Carroll’s Though the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, read by writer Harlan Ellison, was nominated for that grammy, but lost out to Buck Howdy reading Aaaaah! Spooky, Scary Stories & Songs. Well, Mr. Ellison, a prolific and sometimes irreverent writer, has already won hundreds of awards (according to his website) including the San Francisco Chronicle’s 1984 Most Attractive Male Writer, so he can afford to spread the wealth. The Blackstone Audiobooks TTLG is available on iTunes here, and where all fine Children’s Spoken Word Albums are sold (list price for the audio CDs $33).
This year, a couple of Swedish guys called Kristian Scheiblecker and Pontus Nilsson came specially to perform some songs based on Carroll’s so-called “serious poems”. They have been classically trained but the music was more like early Leonard Cohen to my ear. You could certainly imagine Kristian sitting there in his Victorian cottage in Sweden and composing the music in the dark winter nights.
To my surprise I found that Carroll’s poems made terrific lyrics. Read purely as poetry, they are mostly rather banal. I was particularly impressed with “Only A Woman’s Hair” which makes a most touching ballad.“…and, as I touch that lock, strange visions throng
Upon my soul with dreamy grace-
Of woman’s hair, the theme of poet’s song
In every time and place. –A child’s bright tresses, by the breezes kissed
To sweet disorder as she flies,
Veiling, beneath a cloud of golden mist,
Flushed cheek and laughing eyes- –Or fringing, like a shadow, raven-black,
The glory of a queen-like face-
Or from a gipsy’s sunny brow tossed back
In wild and wanton grace……The eyes that loved it once no longer wake:
So lay it by with reverent care-
Touching it tenderly for sorrow’s sake-
It is a woman’s hair.”-quoted at length from jabberwock.co.uk/blog
Camille Rose Garcia, an artist from L.A.’s lowbrow art movement, has illustrated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Surely one of the most punk Alices to go underground, it was released on Groundhog Day, 2010. Below is a sketch posted on the blog Arrested Motion, but we look forward to seeing the finished product in beautiful hardcover, from Collins Design (list price $16).
“Curiouser and Curiouser: The Games and Mind Games of Lewis Carroll,” an interactive exhibition of Lewis Carroll’s games and puzzles opens today at The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library.
From the Library:
The exhibition is drawn largely from the Flodden Heron Collection of Lewis Carroll materials in The Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Flodden W. Heron was an American bibliographer and collector of rare materials on Lewis Carroll. While this exhibition primarily coheres around Carroll’s fascination with puzzles and games, the items also reflect Heron’s own interests in the author, particularly Carroll’s penchant for play and the nature of his relationship with Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the little girl for whom “Alice in Wonderland/”was first written and dedicated.
The University of Illinois owns Carroll’s own chess and backgammon board–two pastimes he combined into an entirely original game called “Lanrick.” Carroll preferred games of skill and logic over those of chance. His games sought to instruct, but never at the expense of amusement.
The Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition includes special “game tables” where visitors can try some of Carroll’s puzzles and games, including Lanrick. Exhibition visitors can also try “mirror writing”–one of Carroll’s favorite forms of correspondence. Children are encouraged to attend the five-week exhibition.
The exhibition concludes on March 5 with a Mad Hatter Tea Party for Young People.
“Curiouser and Curiouser: The Games and Mind Games of Lewis Carroll” at The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library, 1408 W. Gregory Dr., Urbana, IL. from 2 February to March 5, 2010
A designer who specializes in icons, Igor “Rogix” Udushlivy, has a concept for dust jackets with matching bookmarks. “I wonder that it would be great if we can use dust jackets and bookmarks together to create a unique image of a paper book,” he writes. “This idea can help to expand book’s space.” The elegant design for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is pictured above, and there’s dozens more at icoeye.com.
Dingle is a neighborhood of the English city of Liverpool. Liverpudlians, also known as Scousers, have a strong regional identity and an even stronger accent (think early Beatles).
“Alice In Dingleland” follows the journey of ‘posh’ Alice as she is transformed into a true Scouser after following the white rabbit into the Williamson Tunnels.
Using local settings as our inspirations… Dickinson’s Dingle beauty spot, the Tunnels and Princes Park, we have encountered many characters such as the Scouse Mouse, Dave the Knave “I’m innocent, it’s a stitch up”, the militant gardeners, “you’re a name not a number”. The White Rabbit of course, and the double act that is the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, “Mad, Mad I’m fuming!”
Welcome to the LCSNA’s blog, where you can read regular updates about Lewis Carroll’s influence on all aspects of life. Please keep in mind that these posts are informational only; we do not endorse any link, statement or product cited below unless we specifically state that within the post. Also, the bloggers do not speak for the LCSNA as a whole. We hope you’ll visit often to review the posts and add comments.
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