Carroll’s earliest attempt to depict Alice grown suddenly tall is this very lightly penciled sketch on the back of a sheet of writing paper. Although her features are unfinished, the general outline shows Alice clasping her hands and looking towards her now-distant feet.

Carroll refined and reversed his sketch of Alice so that she would appear facing outward from the narrow margin of the original manuscript. The details of her hair and dress have been filled in, but she retains her initial demure expression.

Tenniel keeps Carrol’s general idea, but shows us Alice’s shock at “opening up like a telescope.” Alice is no longer the quiet-looking figure of the manuscript, and confronts the change head on.

For the enlarged and color-printed version, Tenniel gives Alice a blue hair bow and adds ruffles to her apron. The original proof, printed by Edmund Evans, is on the right. The final version, reflecting the artist’s corrections, is on the left.

Carroll’s earliest drawings filled sheets of letter-writing paper. Here, he begins with a sketch of a real rabbit, which evolves over the first page into a fully anthropomorphized form. (A study of Alice in profile appears upside-down on the left.) On the second page, Carroll begins working out Alice’s first meeting with the White Rabbit.

In Carroll’s finished illustration, the White Rabbit is essentially a human figure that has donned a full suit. Carroll depicts the exact moment just before Alice’s encounter with the White Rabbit, when she leans down for her first conversation in Wonderland.

Tenniel’s original drawing—which he later hand colored, presumably at the request of a collector—shifts the emphasis to the moment after Alice first speaks to the White Rabbit, and shows the startled creature, now more rabbit-like and no longer in a full suit, scurrying away.

In the decades following the book’s immediate success, Tenniel was frequently requested to make drawings of his own illustrations for collectors. This fine example was commissioned some time after the book appeared in 1865.

Carroll had difficulty depicting the Blue Caterpillar. Completely wrapped up on itself, the creature is somehow limbless and must rest the hookah awkwardly on the mushroom. The depiction on the right, in brown ink, is a later trial.

Carroll’s finished drawing in the original manuscript refines the figures and adjusts the scale of the illustration. The straightforward depiction shows the Alice and the Blue Caterpillar languidly staring at each other in the moments before their memorable conversation.

George and Edward Dalziel—the finest wood engravers of the day—were commissioned for Alice. They made these pen-and-ink copies of Tenniel’s designs probably after printing the first proofs of the illustrations.

Tenniel worked with Edmund Evans for the first version printed in color. In the initial proof (right), the colors were generally too dark and over-saturated. Tenniel’s notes around the proof call for specific changes, reflected in the version on the left.

Carroll’s earliest sketches (above) of the Mock Turtle show a creature with faceted armature that looks very little like a turtle. His depiction of the Gryphon is likely based on a finished drawing by his brother, Wilfred (below).

For his final drawings in the manuscript, Carroll refined his depiction of the Mock Turtle and gave him the furry head of a calf, picking up on his own pun about mock turtle soup.

Carroll typically used pencil for his earliest sketches; this later pen-and-ink drawing shows his most refined depiction of the Mock Turtle. Captioned “On the lone sea-shore” it does not depict a specific scene in the manuscript but may have been intended as a gift.

Tenniel regularly mined his own work for parody in the pages of Punch. In this cartoon, Alice becomes the conservative politician Arthur Balfour bumbling through a reading of the London Government Bill. Alice retains her own features here, but in the published version, her face becomes lined, and she squints at the paper through a pair of pince-nez.

In one of the last scenes in the manuscript (and published book), the White Rabbit discards his pocket watch and waistcoat and takes on the role of the Herald at the trial of the stolen tarts.

In the original manuscript, Carroll’s version of the White Rabbit as the Herald is clothed in robes with designs reminiscent of a generic playing card; Tenniel refines the outfit to place the Rabbit clearly in the court of the Queen of Hearts.

When the Dalziel brothers engraved Tenniel’s original design, they mistakenly cast the Rabbit’s gaze ahead. After printing the first proof (above), they spotted the error and recast his gaze askance as seen in the second proof (below).