John Tenniel

Born in London in 1820, John Tenniel became one of the great illustrators of the Victorian era. He studied art from a young age and built a reputation for precise draftsmanship, eventually becoming a leading cartoonist for Punch, where his political and social satire reached a huge audience for many years.

He is most widely remembered today for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Those images helped define how generations of readers imagine Alice, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and the rest of Carroll’s strange and playful world.

Tenniel was knighted in 1893, a sign of how highly his work was regarded in his own lifetime. He died in 1914, leaving behind both iconic book illustration and a major body of influential magazine art.