A York University scholar will examine how Lewis Carroll’s Alice books taught children to read through words and visuals more than a century before graphic novels and film adaptations emerged.
Alison Halsall, associate professor at the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, is tracing back to the books’ original pages to map out how they helped shape the field of children’s literature.
This research will be the focus of her work as the inaugural Lewis Carroll Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, Christ Church in the U.K. for the month of August.
Awarded by Christ Church and Bodleian Libraries, the prestigious research fellowship provides access to unique archival materials.
During her fellowship, Halsall will study newly catalogued manuscripts, illustrated editions and adaptation materials to show how Alice pioneered visual, collaborative and cross-media storytelling. Her interest lies specifically at the intersection of archival study, visual narrative and childhood readership.
“Lewis Carroll’s Alice did more than tell a story,” says Halsall, who is also coordinator of York’s Children, Childhood & Youth program. “From the playful typography to the illustrations, Carroll helped invent visual, interactive storytelling and taught children (and adults) to read across words and images.”
Her project will use materials held at Christ Church Library and the Bodleian Libraries to explore how Carroll and illustrator John Tenniel developed foundational visual storytelling techniques together.
Halsall is excited to dive into the Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll collection, including the first edition 1865 Michelson Alice, which was Carroll’s personal edition, to analyze how typography and illustration might guide readers.
“This collection offers a rare opportunity to examine how Carroll orchestrated meaning at the level of the page,” says Halsall. “These materials make it possible to trace how Alice developed from manuscript to printed page, showing how Carroll and Tenniel worked together to create visual pacing strategies.
"I hope to prove what I have long suspected: that this Carroll-Tenniel collaboration demonstrates visual storytelling in formation – one that anticipates modern graphic narrative logics.”
By also studying translations for stage, film, photographs and other visual materials, the study aims to show that Alice spread across stage, screen and other media, challenging the idea that adaptation is a modern practice.
“Materials from early stage and film adaptations, along with objects like the Wonderland postage stamp case, show that Alice was adapted almost immediately,” says Halsall. “Together, these archives and collections demonstrate that Victorian children’s literature was highly adaptive in shaping how readers experienced Alice over time.”
Focusing on the text, Halsall will look variations across manuscripts to examine children’s literature as process rather than product. Carroll’s revisions reveal experimentation with tone, humour and forms of address to child readers, she notes.
“From the first British edition to The Nursery Alice and beyond, the manuscripts and editions suggest a model of participatory reading grounded in play and readerly interaction,” says Halsall. “I will consider the manuscripts as artifacts designed for a child demographic and analyze how they construct Victorian-era child readership and visual literacy.”
The opportunity to study these newly available Carroll manuscripts, editions and ephemera in Oxford, she says, allows her to “trace a clear line from Victorian page design to multimodal storytelling practices that shape contemporary media culture.”
This research will result in several academic and public-facing outcomes, including a peer-reviewed chapter on Carroll’s page design and graphic narrative logics in The Routledge Handbook to Children’s Literature and Graphic Narrative and a larger monograph project titled “Lewis Carroll: Early Transmedial Storyteller."
Findings may also be shared through a public or academic lecture at Oxford and will be included in Halsall’s archive-based teaching, extending its impact to students.