Alice in Sunderland

Talbot, Bryan. Alice in Sunderland. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Books,  2007

Reason read: April Fools

One word: savor. Savor this book slowly. It’s only 319 pages but let every page have it’s moment in time. This is a beautiful piece of art, chock full of culture, biography, history, creative use of the English language (“follow your spirit” with a picture of someone chasing a vodka truck), a comic book inside a graphic novel, brimming with literary references (Thirty-Nine Steps and Rugby, the same school made infamous by Tom Brown’s Schooldays, to name a few) and much, much more. This is a comprehensive walk through history with a myriad of people and places leading the way. In Book Lust To Go Nancy Pearl called it “one of the richest experiences of her life (p 68).

The premise is really quite simple. Bryan Talbot has researched his hometown of Sunderland and found every possible parallel connection to Lewis Carroll’s famed The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. It’s brilliant. Read this alongside The Annotated Alice for a healthy dose of all things Wonderland.

Best quote, “All the lives seen tonight…so many lives…” (p 290). Case in point: here’s the ridiculously long list of Who’s Who in Alice in Sunderland. How about a game? How many people do you recognize?:

• Abraham Lincoln
• Al Davison
• Alan Hargreaves
• Alexandria “Xie” Kitchin
• Alfred Jarry
• Alice Liddell
• Ally Sloper
• Andy Capp
• Arthur Racham
• Arthur Frost
• Bande Dessinee
• Beatles
• Bede
• Benedict Biscop
• Benny Hill
• Beryl Formby
• Bessie Wilcox
• Betty Boop
• Bill Shakespeare
• Blondin
• Bobby Thompson
• Bram Stoker
• Bryan Ferry
• Caedmon
• Capt. Edward Robinson
• Capt. Joseph Wiggins
• Capt. William Bligh
• Caryl Hargreaves
• Cary Grant
• Catherine Cookson
• Charles Dickens
• Charles Kingsley
• Charles Lutwidge Dodson
• Charles Weiss
• Charlie Chaplin
• Chaz Brenchley
• Chster P Hackenbush
• Chico Marx
• Chris Mullin
• Clarkson Stanfield
• Colin Wilbourn
• Craig Knowles
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Dave Stewart
• David Malan
• David McKean
• Dennis Potter
• Dick Turpin
• Disraeli
• Doctor Who
• Dorothy Williamson
• Dracula
• Duke of Wellington
• Earl Zetland
• Earl of Bute
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Edgar Atheling
• Edith Liddell
• Edward Bulwer Lytton
• Edward Burne Jones
• Edward Hylton
• Edward Schoeder
• Edwin Moss
• Eileen O’Shaughnessy
• Elizabeth I
• Elizabeth Liddell
• Ellen Terry
• Emily Pankhurs
• Emperor Claudius
• Eric Gill
• Florence Becker Lennon
• Frank Caws
• Franz Kafka
• Frederick Cotton
• Fredericka Liddell
• Friar Tuck
• George “Dubya” Bush
• George Formby
• George Hudson
• George Lightfoot
• George Lilburne
• George Orwell
• George Stephenson
• George Washington
• Gerald Frow
• Gertrude Bell
• Grace Slick
• Grant Morrison
• Harry Furniss
• Harry Lauder
• Harry Potter
• Henry VIII
• Hedworth Williams, Sr.
• Henry George Liddell
• Henry Holiday
• Henry Hylton
• Henry Irving
• Henry Lambton
• Henry Stanley
• Houdini
• Hunt Emerson
• Ian Watson
• Irving Berlin
• Isabella Hazard
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel
• Jack Crawford
• Jack the Ripper
• James Herriot
• James Joyce
• Jan Svankmeyers
• Jeff Smith
• Jimmy Carter
• Joe Nattras
• John Bunyan
• John George Lambton
• John Humble
• John Lawrence
• John Lennon
• John Lilburne
• John Millais
• John Paul Jones
• John Proctor
• John Ruskin
• John Tenniel
• Jonathan Hanker
• Jonathan Miller
• Jordan Smith
• Joseph Conrad
• Joseph Swan
• Joseph Wiggins
• Joshua Wilson
• Karl Fisher
• Karl Marx
• Kate Adie
• Keanu Reeves
• Kelly Osbourne
• Ken Russell
• Kevin Cadwallender
• King Athelstan
• King Charles I
• King Ecgfrith
• King George I
• King Harold
• King James I
• Lady Montagu Wortley
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Leo Baxendale
• Leopold Hargreaves
• Les Dawson
• Lewis Carroll
• Lily Lumley
• Lizzie Webster
• Lord Ravensworth
• Luther Arkwright
• MacDonald Gill
• Manfred Mann
• Manuella Bute Smedley
• Margaret Thatcher
• Marie Lloyd
• Marilyn Manson
• Marilyn Monroe
• Mark Lemon
• Marlene Dietrich
• Mary Ann Robson Cotton
• Mary Shelley
• Mary Wortley
• Max Ernst
• Mervyn Peake
• Michael Bute
• Michelangelo
• Mike D’Abo
• Miles Standish
• Mother Shipton
• Mr T
• Nannie Scott
• Ned Kelly
• Neil Gaiman
• Nellie Melba
• Nicholas Hawksmoor
• Odo of Bayeux
• Olga Lowe
• Olive Hardy
• Oliver Goldsmith
• Oswald Moseley
• Oswald Stoll
• Ozzy Osbourne
• Patrick Lavelle
• Paul McCartney
• Peter Camm
• Peter O’Toole
• Peter Smart
• Peter Sutcliffe
• Prince Leopold
• Queen Elizabeth II
• Queen Victoria
• Ralph Steadman
• Ravi Shankar
• Reginald Hargreaves
• Rev. Charles Collingwood
• Rev. John Wesley
• Rev. Robert Gray
• Rex Hargreaves
• Rhoda Liddell
• Richard Nixon
• Richard Thornton
• Richard Wallace
• Rick Griffin
• Robert Bowes
• Robert Graves
• Robert Heinlein
• Robert Liltburne
• Robert Stephenson
• Robin Hood
• Robinson Duckworth
• Roger Skelton
• Roland Wilson
• Rudolf Toffer
• Saint Cuthbert
• Saint Godric
• Saint Hilda
• Sally Geeson
• Salvador Dali
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Sarah Junner Lawrence
• Sarah Michelle Gellar
• Scott McCloud
• Septimus Scott
• Sheri Holman
• Sidney James
• Sir Henry Havelock
• Sir Humphrey Davy
• Sir John Lambton
• Sir John Conyers
• Sir Walter Scott
• Sir William of Hylton
• Stan Laurel
• Steven Spielberg
• Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
• Suzy Varty
• T Arthur
• TS Eliot
• Tennyson
• Thomas Dixon
• Thomas Edison
• Thomas Edward Lawrence
• Thomas Henry Liddell
• Thomas Paine
• Thomas Randall
• Tom Taylor
• Tony Blair
• Tove Jansson
• Trina Robbins
• Ulysses S Grant
• Vesta Tilley
• Virginia Woolf
• Vladimir Nabokov
• WC Fields
• WH Auden
• Wee Georgie Woods
• Whoopi Goldberg
• Wilkie Collins
• William Bell Scott
• William Blake
• William Clanny
• William Hogarth
• William Hylton
• William Joyce
• William McGonagall
• William Mills
• William Morris
• William Mowbray
• William Reid Clanny
• William the Bastard
• William the Conqueror
• William Wilcox
• Windson McKay
• Winnie Davies
• Woody Allen
• Yehudi Menhin

Fun stuff: Ever wonder why all public doors are supposed to open outward? The answer is in Alice in Sunderland. Did you know there is a missing Alice chapter called Wasp in a Wig? Or that Grace Slick is such a huge fan of Alice that she created a whole series of Wonderland inspired paintings when she retired from music.

Favorite line, “Don’t confuse the genre with the medium” (p 187).

Author fact: Talbot has his own website here.

Book trivia: I know I said it before but this book is an oversized visual treat.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Comics with a Sense of Place” (p 68).