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• 1 media/audience_for_nursery.jpg media/the_nursery_coat_of_arms.jpg 2020-11-10T08:46:31-08:00 The Audience for The Nursery Alice, 1890. 9 By Alex Pont plain 2020-11-25T11:59:58-08:00
  Lewis Carroll stated in the preface of The Nursery Alice that the intended audience was for children “aged from naught to five” (Carroll). Children that young will most certainly have difficulty reading a text—even a text that is specifically crafted for them in the first place. An adult primarily performed the reading as the children focused on the lush and vividly colored new illustrations by Tenniel. However, if the children were unable to read the text, and for the incredibly young, unable to even understand text read aloud, then who was the intended audience for The Nursery Alice?
   
  
  Lewis Carroll directly addresses that very question in the same preface, “[the text is] to be thumbed, cooed over, dog-eared, rumpled, and kissed by the illiterate, ungrammatical, dimpled darlings” (Carroll). While the intention is undoubtedly sweet, it still does not provide a solid reason for producing such a detailed and expensive new version of the Alice books. According to Zohar Shavit, most children’s literature is read by adults to children, making children’s literature ambivalent. That means “texts which formally belong to one system (the children’s) and are primarily read by the reading public of another system (the adult)” (Shavit). The ambivalence of The Nursery Alice was not unknown to Carroll, who stated in the preface that children from five to fifteen, fifteen to twenty-five, and twenty-five to “children if a ‘certain’ age” are all possible contenders for the book. Thus, he rewrote the entire text to be for all audiences despite him simplifying entire sections, removing and adding new chapters, and even modifying the poems, so that everyone in the world could enjoy the Alice adventure. The rewriting of the original text is in line with Zohar’s theory of ambivalent texts, as he further states that these kinds of texts are often overlooked for their simplicity but are, in fact, the most difficult to craft. That makes it possible for the writer to reach a broader reading public—both young and old—while also enabling “the elite to recognize the dominant status of the text in the canonized system for children” (Shavit). Though Carroll was infatuated with the elite, eventually encountering the British Royalty, there is no evidence to suggest that Carroll wrote The Nursery Alice—or any of the Alice texts—to subvert the literary elite’s expectations.
  
  Another reason for creating The Nursery Alice was Carroll’s meeting the Hargreaves, taking particular interest in Reginald’s seven-year-old daughter. Carroll wished for his new version of Alice to return to the oral performances he first gave to Alice Liddel and her sister “on the riverbank” back in the 1850s (Douglas-Fairhurst). That makes sense considering the enlarged, vividly colored, and detailed pictures accompanied by simplified texts to be read by mothers; or, as Douglas-Fairhurst put it, “a script that encouraged adult readers to bring [the pictures] to life.” The intention of The Nursery Alice was for parents to accompany their children during reading time, just as Carroll had accompanied Alice Liddel and her sister all those years ago.
   
  
  While the text may have been difficult for most young children, it was no challenge for Princess Alice of Albany, later the Countess of Athlone. In a series of correspondences between Carroll and Alice’s mother, Princess Helena, The Duchess of Albany, Helena praises the new edition of the book (Dodgson-Collingwood). She was particularly ecstatic over the fact that the book taught Alice to “like reading and to do it out of lesson time (Cohen). Carroll had initially dedicated a copy of his book for Princess Alice after meeting her years before when she accidentally, and unknowingly, offended him. According to one of the letters, Princess Alice had said of Carroll’s famous stammer, “why does he waggle his mouth like that?”(Athlone). While Carroll was embarrassed, he later gifted her a copy of The Nursery Alice with her Coats of Arms stamped on a blank page, and on a separate page, a hand-written personal dedication to her.

  Further Reading

  Cohen, Morton N. The Lion and The Unicorn. Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol.7, pgs. 120-126, 1983.
  Carroll decided a children’s book (for ages naught to five) should only be written after the illustrations have been drawn; he believed it was the only way for the writing to occur naturally. “The pictures are the primary focus,” Cohen says as he analyzes the new text.

  Shavit, Zohar. The Ambivalent Status of Texts: The Case of Children’s Literature. Duke University Press, Poetics Today Vol. 1, No. 3, 1980.
  Zohar states that children’s literature is most often read by adults rather than the audience it is intended for, making the text ambivalent. The ambivalence of the text is an artistic choice that Zohar argues is far more difficult to achieve than when a writer writes for a specific audience.

  Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and The Secret History of Wonderland. Harvard University Press, Ch. 32, pgs. 331-335, 2015.
  Twenty brand new colored (for the very first time) illustrations were first produced, followed by new poems to replace cut poems, simplified vocabulary, explanations for character motivations, and, above all, a larger print size and book format. Carroll even interacts with the reader more often than in past editions.

  Susina, Jan. The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children’s Literature. Routledge, New York, Ch. 5 & 6, 2010.
  In chapter six, Susina focuses on the book itself. Literary critics deemed it a failure in adapting Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for younger children. While his intentions were indeed at odds with the book’s reception, Susina suggests that Carroll still came out on top, as the book brought the Alice legacy further into popular culture.

  Dodgson-Collingwood, Stuart. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll. Christ Church, Oxford, Ch. 7, 8, & 10. 2004.
  In chapter six, Susina focuses on the book itself. Literary critics deemed it a failure in adapting Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for younger children. While his intentions were indeed at odds with the book’s reception, Susina suggests that Carroll still came out on top, as the book brought the Alice legacy further into popular culture.  

  Athlone, Princess Alice. For My Grandchildren. London, Evans Bros., 1966.
  The Princess of Athlone writes an autobiography. She discusses everything from her birth until her retirement. A very small section is dedicated to her friendship with Lewis Carroll in which she reveals an embarrassing tale between the two of them.