It is a curious fact that with Through the Looking-Glass the faculty of making book illustrations departed from me.

Sir John Tenniel (28 February 1820 – 25 February 1914) was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and political cartoonist, most famous for his association with Lewis Carroll and his works.

Quotes

  • A wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art.
    • Refusing to illustrate a proposed chapter in Through the Looking-Glass, as quoted in The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), p. 146
  • It is a curious fact that with Through the Looking-Glass the faculty of making book illustrations departed from me. … I have done nothing in that direction since.
    • Declining to illustrate a later book by Lewis Carroll, as quoted in The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), p. 146

M. N. Cohen & E. Wakeling, Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators (2003)

  • Please let me know to what extent you have used, or intend using, the pruning knife.
    • Urging Carroll to shorten Through the Looking-Glass; p. 14
  • The nine Wise Words are full of wisdom, besides being decidedly funny.
    • Of Carroll's essay Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing; p. 18
  • How true it is that some have greatness thrust upon them! - and you may be quite sure that it was none of my seeking.
    • Of his knighthood; p. 18

Quotes about Tenniel

  • Mr. Tenniel is the only artist, who has drawn for me, who resolutely refused to use a model, and declared he has no more needed one than I should need a multiplication-table to work on a mathematical problem!
    • Lewis Carroll to Gertrude Thomson, letter of 31 March 1892
    • Quoted in M. N. Cohen & E. Wakeling, Lewis Carroll and His Illustrators (2003), p. 247
  • Tenniel raised the political cartoon to a new level of dignity and importance.
    • Edward Hodnett, Image and Text (1982), p. 167
  • Tenniel, who had started as a child prodigy, nearly ended as one. When a boy, fencing with his father, he lost the sight of of one eye. But the remaining one saw more than most.
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