John Tenniel

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

 * Tenniel is the man.
 * Sir Noel Paton, refusing to illustrate Through the Looking-Glass; quoted in Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 130


 * 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.
 * Harold Bloom, in an Introduction to a 2006 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, p. 23