This is Alice as Arthur Rackham saw her.

It's interesting to observe how the look of fictional characters is fixed in our brain, more by the artists' illustrations than the writers' descriptions.

The most elaborate language pales before a memorable picture - and such is certainly the case with Alice in her two sleepwalks through Wonderland.

There were various interpretations of Alice, beginning with Lewis Carroll's own original drawing - which defied the laws of anatomy - and continuing through the drawings of John Tenniel in 1896 and (after the copyright expired in 1907) the work of Charles Robinson, Arthur Rackham, Millicent Sowerby, Thomas Maybank, Mabel Lucie Atwell and others.

THESE DAYS, IT'S DISNEY

In recent years, the Walt Disney image factory has had a powerful part to play in the portrayal of the ever-polite little heroine - but it is probably the original Tenniel illustrations that continue to hold Alice in the cortex of the older generation.

Of this list of artists (there were even more than I've listed) Arthur Rackham was probably the most skilled: his imagery embracing the world of gnomes, fairies, menacing forest and gnarled woods in a way that was much more adult than the subject matter. But the same has been said of the Alice stories - so his pictures could be considered an ideal match.

Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) was much in favour of the Tenniel drawings, despite a fractious relationship with the artist , and this is unsurprising since it is Tenniel's Alice with her fallen hair, and Tenniel's Mad Hatter with his ten and sixpenny hat tag, that our brains best remember.

RACKHAM STANDS ALONE

But Rackham, as he matured from ordinary to outstanding, drew so far ahead of such lesser lights that he ranks in the forefront of children's book illustrators - indeed, in the ranks of illustrators generally.

Look at this picture of Alice as an example. Notice how, in her maelstrom of playing cards, her form itself takes on the shape of a card - right down to the patterns in her dress.

Comparisons of book illustrators approached the fervour in the early nineteen-hundreds that comparisons of movie actors do today. Who is the best James Bond? Who best portrayed Alice? Criticism often became heated, even bitter, since John Tenniel was still alive (at 87) when the Rackham book appeared in 1907.

As always, art was, and is, in the eye of the beholder - so here are some random Rackham illustrations to prompt your own interest.

He was a marvel ... in a marvellous age of illustration.

- Himself

(Click on the picture at left.)