Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1966, Charles van Sandwyk moved with his family to Canada as a child. His artistic talents emerged early. Fascinated by calligraphy, engraving, and traditional bookmaking, he developed a distinctive artistic language that seems to exist outside any particular era. As a young artist, he produced limited-edition books printed on antique presses, combining hand lettering, etchings, and watercolours in a manner more reminiscent of nineteenth-century private presses than contemporary publishing. His first self-published book appeared when he was just 20, and won a national award. Since then his work has been archived by the National Library of Canada and treasured by private collectors across the world.

Among his best-loved creations is How to See Fairies, a delightful celebration of the unseen magical world, – which he both wrote and illustrated. His artistic achievements extend well beyond fairy tales, his original books, including The Parade to Paradise and Sketches from the Dream Island of Birds, are preserved in the National Library of Canada and are treasured in numerous private collections. Van Sandwyk describes himself as an artist inspired by nature, detail, and the beauty of everyday life. His childhood observations of African wildlife, together with years spent in Fiji listening to local stories and creating tales for children, helped shape the whimsical narrative quality that characterises his books today

For the Folio Society, Van Sandwyk has produced illustrations for The Blue Fairy Book, The Wind in the Willows, How to See Fairies and Alice in Wonderland. This limited edition of Alice in Wonderland was published by The Folio Society to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first edition. It sold out rapidly, but was followed by a second edition in 2019, displaying an extra set of illustrations. His interpretation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is among the most enchanting modern visual reimaginings of Lewis Carroll’s classic. Rather than offering a contemporary reinvention, van Sandwyk brings Alice back to the golden age of illustrated books, creating images that feel timeless, intimate, and almost discovered rather than invented.

Isabelle Simler is a French author and illustrator best known for her richly detailed, nature-inspired children’s books and illustrated classics. Her work is characterized by meticulous observation of animals and plants, vibrant colors, and highly decorative compositions. Among her best-known books are: Plume, The Bleu Hour, Sweet Dream, or My Wild Cat. What makes Simler particularly admired is her ability to combine scientific precision, especially in depicting wildlife, with a dreamlike and poetic atmosphere.

In 2025, she published an illustrated edition of Alice au pays des merveilles (Éditions courtes et longues) and received considerable praise for its fresh visual interpretation of Wonderland.

Publishers describe it as a visually rich reinterpretation of Lewis Carroll’s classic, featuring her distinctive artistic style throughout the text. Simler’s Wonderland feels lush, botanical, almost natural-history-inspired. These rich naturalistic illustrations arecombined with dreamlike fantasy, displaying dramatic shifts in scale and perspective that echo Alice’s constantly changing size and perception.

Described by the Lewis Carroll Society of France as a brilliant reinvention of Wonderland, was all also elected one the “Astonishing Illustrators VIII” by the Lewis Carroll Society of North America (LCSNA) (further reviewed here ).

Adriana Peliano is a Brazilian visual artist, designer, illustrator, writer, researcher, and one of the leading Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland scholars and promoters in Brazil. Her research targets the crosstalk between the visual arts and literature. Adriana holds a degree in Communication from the University of Brasília. She earned a Master’s degree in Visual Arts and New Media from KIAD in Kent, UK, and a Master’s degree in Aesthetics and Art History from the University of São Paulo (USP), where she defended her dissertation “Through Surrealism and What Alice Found There” in 2012. In 2022, she completed a postgraduate program in Children’s Books at Casa Tombada in São Paulo, developing the SoulCollage® project “Cartoteca da Infância” (“Childhood Card Library”).

Alice is much more than a subject for Peliano. It is a lifelong artistic and intellectual focus. In 2010, she founded the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil, through which she organizes lectures, workshops, cultural events, publications, and research activities related to Carroll’s work. Adriana is constantly reimagining “Alicisms amid wondermarvels and psychedelights” (https://alicedelia.com.br/adriana-peliano/).

Peliano is especially known for her work on Brazilian editions of Lewis Carroll’s books. She co-translated, designed, and conceived the celebrated Brazilian edition of Aventuras de Alice no Subterrâneo (Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, Scipione, 2011), an adaptation of Carroll’s original manuscript. She has received two Jabuti Awards, one of them for the concept and graphic design of this book.

In recent years, Peliano has experimented with AI-assisted visual creation. Her 2024 project AI-CE reimagines the Alice books through AI-generated and artist-directed imagery, combining Carroll quotations with surreal visual sequences. This wonderful project received attention from members of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America.

Libico Maraja was born in 1912 in Bellinzona, Switzerland. The name Libico hia a reference to his father country, Libia. Sonn after his birthe his family moved Lugano, where he studied (winning several prizes for his drawing skills) and began his career opening the Ala studios. Later in 1940, he moved to Milan, where he started collaborating with IMA Publiccitá. In this period he also started working with Fabbri Fratelli, becoming famous for his illustrations of numerous children classics, such as Peter Pan, Pinocchio , Moby Dick and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. For B&C Maraja illustrated books like Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist.

Maraja Alice’s illustrations, produced in 1953, are among his most celebrated works and are considered a landmark of 20th-century Italian book illustration. He illustrated Alice creating a distinctive visual interpretation that differed from the original Victorian illustrations by John Tenniel. His Wonderland has a dreamlike quality that softens the darker or more grotesque aspects that appear in some other interpretations of the story.

Maraja presents her as a graceful, curious and thoughtful observer moving through an enchanting but mysterious world.Her appearance reflects a mid-20th-century European artistic sensibility while remaining faithful to Carroll’s character as an intelligent child confronting increasingly strange situations.

Interestingly, there is a different version from 1968.

Alisa Smith Williams is a digital artist and illustrator that started as a hobby and has grown into a relevant body of work. A forensic psychiatrist by profession, she has been creating a novel level of surrealist art. Alisa work begins with images created using AI models. These images are then heavily edited with overlays, grunge features, compositing, adjustments and collaged elements (https://www.alisasmithwilliams.com). In her own words “her work begins and ends with storybook surrealism, and along the way leans heavily on pre-Raphaelite, Renaissance, Flemish, and Medieval schools of art, as well as pop surrealism”. She aims at celebrating childhood fairytales, legends, mystery, botanicals, alchemy, poetry, and history.

One of her initial illustrtions featuring Alice and the Mad Hatter captured the attention of editors of the Imaginarion Books that invited her to illustrate Alice. Her beautiful limited edition of Alice in Wonderland (Imaginarium Books, 2024) is a magnificent collection of anthropomorphic fantastical creatures that capture the whimsical and imaginative essence of the Wonderland. The first edition was limited to 2500 numbered copies, the second editions is limited to 500 signed copies and includes a reprint.

Born in Paris in 1883, Laurencin emerged during one of the most revolutionary periods in European art. She studied painting, became associated with the Cubists, exhibited alongside major avant-garde artists, and moved within the intellectual circles of early twentieth-century Paris. She was also romantically involved with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the most influential literary voices of the era.

Laurencin’s paintings resist easy categorization. While she exhibited with the Cubists, she never fully embraced Cubism’s fractured geometry. Instead, she developed a visual language that felt surprisingly delicate amid the bold declarations of modernism. Pale pinks, silvery greys, powder blues, and soft greens became her signature palette. Young women, animals, flowers, and dreamlike landscapes drift through her compositions as if suspended between reality and memory. She quietly created a universe of her own.

Rather than adopting the visual vocabulary established by her male contemporaries, Laurencin constructed an aesthetic centered on female relationships, self-fashioning, emotional ambiguity, and poetic atmosphere. There is something distinctly “Alice-like” about her world, not Lewis Carroll’s narrative exactly, but the feeling of crossing a threshold into another dimension where ordinary rules no longer apply. Animals appear as companions, time seems suspended, identity becomes fluid.

In such context, illustrating Alice in Wonderland (1930, The Black Sun Press) was a fitting project for an artist whose work consistently explored dream states, transformation, and imagined femininity. This rare edition is especially desirable because it contains six original color lithographs by Marie Laurencin and was issued in a relatively small limited edition.

George Brinsley Sheridan Le Fanu (1854-1929), an Irish artist and illustrator, was the youngest son of the celebrated Gothic writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Born in Dublin in 1854, he trained as an artist in Dublin, London, and Paris before establishing his career in London. An Alice for Esperanto Readers

Le Fanu’s place in Alice history comes from a particularly unusual edition of Alice. In 1910, he illustrated La Aventuroj de Alicio en Mirlando, an Esperanto translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (published by Benn). At a time when publishers were eagerly producing new illustrated editions following the expiration of key copyright restrictions on Alice, Le Fanu joined a growing list of artists offering alternatives to Tenniel’s iconic imagery.

What immediately distinguishes Le Fanu’s Alice illustrations is their elegant simplicity. Unlike Tenniel’s heavily detailed Victorian engravings, Le Fanu relied on clean line work and uncluttered compositions. His drawings possess a quiet charm that feels surprisingly modern. His Alice is recognisably Edwardian rather than Victorian. The character appears lighter, softer, and more naturalistic. The illustrations focus less on satire and grotesque exaggeration and more on narrative clarity, inviting readers gently into Wonderland rather than a overwhelming visual complexity.

This somehow forgotten Alice illustrator, rather than attempting to outdo Tenniel’s famous interpretations, Le Fanu approached the story as a seasoned children’s illustrator. His emphasis is on readability and character, making Wonderland approachable for younger readers. Brinsley Le Fanu was neither a revolutionary stylist nor one of the best-known interpreters of Carroll’s work. Instead, he represents something equally valuable: the international spread of Alice during the early twentieth century.

Today, more than a century after their publication, Le Fanu’s Alice drawings remain a delightful discovery for collectors, scholars, and anyone interested in the rich visual tradition of Wonderland.

Gennady Vladimirovich Kalinovsky was one of Russia’s most renowned illustrators. In 1943, while still a young artist, he submitted his drawing The Fall of the Nibelungs to a newspaper competition, won first prize, and received a recommendation for admission to the Moscow Secondary Art School. He later enrolled at the Surikov Art Institute, where he studied from 1949 to 1955.

Kalinovsky’s body of work, which includes illustrations for more than ninety books, is distinguished by its delicate pen-and-ink line work and richly detailed compositions. His imagery blends fantasy and surrealism, creating dreamlike scenes infused with an often subtle Gothic atmosphere.

One of Kalinovsky’s greatest artistic passions was Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, although political constraints prevented him from and publishing them until he was nearly sixty years old. He achieved widespread acclaim with his masterful black-and-white illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in Boris Zakhoder’s celebrated adaptation (1974, Detskaya Literatura). He subsequently illustrated several other works by Carroll. Particularly noteworthy are his illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass, for which he received the Ivan Fyodorov Prize and Diploma in 1980 and 1982. In 1988, he produced a colour edition of Alice in Wonderland. More recently, Artist’s Choice Editions has published editions of both Kalinovsky’s Alice books, combining the original black-and-white illustrations with his later colour artwork.

Many Russian collectors regard Kalinovsky’s Alice in Wonderland illustrations as among the finest interpretations of Carroll’s work ever published in Russian.

Milo Winter (1888–1956) was a celebrated American illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration, a period spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Princeton, Illinois, Winter studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and began his career with Billy Popgun in 1912. Milo Winter illustrated numerous classics, including Gulliver’s Travels, Arabian Nights, Aesop’s Fables, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1916 by Rand McNally & Company

Winter’s Alice is a departure from the earlier versions. She appears older, more reflective, and elegantly composed, often adorned with a stylish ribbon and soft, elongated features. His style blends Art Nouveau grace with narrative clarity, making Wonderland feel both magical and grounded.

Winter’s illustrations are known for their masterful accuracy, humorous touches, and emotional depth. His work remains a favorite among collectors and readers, offering a timeless interpretation of Alice.