Lewis Carroll & his illustrators : collaborations & correspondence, 1865-1898

Over the course of his literary career, Lewis Carroll communicated endlessly with the people he commissioned to provide the picture plates for his books.

These were relationships that were fraught with tensions, overwhelmed by Carroll's perfectionism and maintained by a mutual respect.

These letters give an insight into the way these books came to look the way they did.

Fastidious in his approach, Carroll would redraw the illustrator's sketches, often several times and would not stand for anything he considered to be below the best.

Sometimes this would run to pulping entire print runs of books simply for the plates being "far too bright".

This is not to say that Carroll was single-minded in his approach, these letters unearth the uneasy collaborations he had with artists such as Tenniel, who would force him to change his mind, sometimes even altering the text as a consequence.

This is a book for anyone who has loved the Alice books.