Wednesday 8 October 2008

A Handful of Further Searles

Just a quick one here, as life away from the internet is using up all of my energy at the moment. I've been trying to get hold of a copy of the newish NYRB edition of Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, which uses a Sir John Tenniel illustration of the White Knight from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.



However, my usual enablers have been unable to get me a copy of this version, so I was happy to come across an old Penguin edition, with a cover by old favourite Ronald Searle.



Searle also did another Wilson cover I'd not seen before...



..and I also found two more of his Penguin designs I missed in the research for my earlier big Searle post.


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2 comments:

  1. Ian Koviak9 October 2008 at 09:44

    That fourth book down with the two penguins talking ("read any good books lately?") is classic.

    Is that white knight illustration from Alice meant to allude to Don Quixote? I heard that somewhere once, but don't remember...

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  2. JRSM9 October 2008 at 16:53

    I think it is: other suggestions from http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/school/alice1021.html ...

    'There has been much conjecture as to Tenniel's model for his portrayal of this character: some of his contemporaries believed it to be his colleague, Horace (nicknamed Ponny) Mayhew, but Tenniel himself has also been recognised as a valid candidate, as hinted at in Linley Sambourne's 'Good Sir John!' design of 1893, not to mention Tenniel's own self-portrait of 1889. Pictorial parallels must not be forgotten, however: Millais' painting, Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857), is convincingly suggested by Timothy Hilton, and would certainly have been seen by the author of Alice as well as by its illustrator; Cervantes' Don Quixote is another likely model, especially since a large number of illustrated editions appeared during the nineteenth century.'

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