Lewis Carroll reads

One of the great things about modern poetry is that we can listen or watch recordings of the poets themselves reading their works. Perhaps using a modified Wayback Machine, Jim Clark/poetryanimations has made it possible now to watch poets of the past "read" their works, including Lewis Carroll!

(Before you ask, the real reader is Justin Brett.)

A Christmas gift to a dear child

The Folio Society is offering a limited edition (only 3,750 copies!) of Alice's Adventures under Ground, the original manuscript version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with Lewis Carroll's own illustrations. While offered before by other publishers, this leather-bound edition seems to be reproduced from the original owned by the British Library, and is accompanied by "an illuminating companion booklet, in which Sally Brown, Curator of Modern Manuscripts at the British Library, traces the manuscript’s development, and explores Carroll’s friendship with Alice Liddell and her family. This 32-page companion booklet contains 17 illustrations, including photographs taken by Lewis Carroll."

(By the way, I believe this is the same booklet...)

Baltimore's Lantern Parade

See the spectacle of over a thousand candle-lit, paper, and bamboo lanterns, carried through Baltimore's Patterson Park this Saturday (October 25). The Great Halloween Lantern Parade has a Lewis Carroll theme this year, so it is titled "Beware the Jabberwock!" "The ghostly procession ends with a shadow puppet drama set to eerie, live music. The show, projected on a 40-foot tall screen, tells a different spooky story every year." (Baltimore.about.com, Baltimore Sun) I'm guessing we know what story will be told this year!
UPDATE 10/27: Photos from this year's event are linked to from the main website.

A Walk Through Wonderland

Oooh, I can't wait! Duirwaigh Gallery's online exhibition "A Walk Through Wonderland" will be held October 27-November 30th 2008 on www.DuirwaighGallery.com. Sculptors, painters and multi-media artists from around the world will present their Alice-inspired works. See the website for the entire list of amazing artists, including Mary Blair!, and the blog for some sneak peaks of the works. (Also be sure to check out the Gallery's short film "A Knock at the Door", which includes several Alice images.)

Indigo Moon Alice

Yorkshire's Indigo Moon Theatre is currently touring the U.K. with a shadow puppet performance of "Alice and the White Rabbit": "Join Alice on her magical adventure as she chases the White rabbit back in time on a fantastic spiralling journey into Wonderland. Watch her change in size in this dream-like shadow adaption... On her journey she meets the Cheshire Cat, a two-legged dragon and the March Hare at the mediaeval Mad Hatter's Tea party...'Alice and The White Rabbit' celebrates different shadow techniques and is inspired by the gothic architecture and medieval times of the original white rabbit statue found in St. Mary's Church, Beverley, East Yorkshire."

Dodgson photos in Italy

The exhibit "I Rossetti tra Vasto e Londra" ("The Rossettis between Vasto and London") includes photographs of the Rossetti family (the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet Christina Rossetti, and their siblings, the critic William Michael Rossetti and author Maria Francesca Rossetti) taken by their close friend Charles Dodgson. The exhibit is at the Musei Civici di Palazzo d’Avalos, Vasto, Italy, from August 14 until November 16. For further information in English, see the Times article, "Italian homecoming for Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti."

The ultimate "off with their heads"!

Artist Judith G. Klausner has recreated the "painting the roses red" scene from Alice in Wonderland... with the Queen of Hearts and Card Gardeners made from preying mantises!

Alice icons

Icon creator website IconShock.com has added a set of Alice in Wonderland-inspired icons for Windows Vista operating system software developers. Alice, the Cheshire Cat with a wonderful grin, the Mad Hatter, and King and Queen of Hearts are presented in the "Lumina" style, and look a bit like Weebles to my eye. (Do people know what Weebles are anymore?)

Asylum in Wonderland

On select nights in September, October, and November of every year, Universal Studios Florida theme park is transformed into Halloween Horror Nights. This year the event includes "Asylum in Wonderland": "Stepping through the Looking Glass, you find yourself in the depths of Wonderland, journeying through the nightmare that Alice couldn't escape. The wonderful figures you once believed to inhabit this fantastical place have been peering into the Looking Glass themselves, and have come face to face with Bloody Mary!"

Forever Afternoon

(c) Mio Shirai, from "Forever Afternoon," 2008

The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland (U.K.) has a new exhibit, "A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling," that includes an Alice-related film: "[Mio] Shirai's new short film, 'Forever Afternoon', re-creates a section of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. ...Shirai allows us to re-read Alice in a new way, as a parable of how we experience and assimilate alien cultures and places. Here, Alice - played by Shirai - has to learn the rules of engagement of a strange yet familiar place, rules which are logical, and yet different to our own. The film was shot entirely in locations which Carroll knew and visited in the North East."