New BBC Edition of "Alice"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 799, 12 November 1954, Page 9

New BBC Edition of "Alice"

\V HEN Alice in Wonderland was first published in 1865, the staid critical journal The Athenaeum found it a "stiff, over-wrought story," but millions of readers have since delighted in the book’s comical absurdities and delicate, fanciful fun. Lewis Carroll’s _famous story has been broadcast by the BBC at regular intervals during the past 20 years, and the latest production of the five-part serial is the second to be issued as a transcription. It is currently being

heard in 2YA’s Children’s Session (at 5.15 p.m. on Thursdays), and will be broadcast from the other YA and YZ stations in coming weeks. Hitherto the part of Alice has always been played by a child, but this time it is taken by a grown-up, Patricia Field. The rest of the cast includes some of the best-known names in British radio: Wilfred Babbage, Frank Birch, Vivienne Chatterton, Harry Hutchinson, Stephen Jack, Mary O’Farrell, Bryan Powley, Marjorie Westbury, and Fred Yule. David Davis, who is‘ the storyteller, also plays the incidental piano music, which includes Richard Addinsell’s charming "A Boat Beneath a Summer Sky," which was originally written for a stage version of Alice. David Davis has also set two of the rhymes to his own music-"The Lobster Quadrille" and "Soup of the Evening, Beautiful Soup." David Davis is Head of the BBC Children’s Hour, and he is known to countless youngsters in Britain as simply "David." He considers Alice in Wonderland to be one of the most successful stories ever broadcast by the BBC for younger children. Lewis Carroll, in real life the Reverend Charles Dodgson, was an Oxford don, author, mathematician, and one of the first notable amateur photographers. He was born in 1832 and died in 1898. The original Alice, who later became Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves, first heard the story from Mr. Dodgson during a river excursion in 1862 when she was ten. Later, he gave the little girl a laboriously-written 92-page book with 37 pen and ink drawings which formed the basis of the now famous Tenniel

illustrations. Mr. Dodgson’s original fhanuscript was sold at Sotheby’s, the famous book auction rooms, for £15,400. in 1928-at the time a record price for a British book. The manuscript included with it six autographed letters from the author. Later it was sold in America, with two other copies, for over £30,000. Eventually the original manuscript was presented by a "group of well-wishers in the U.S.A." to the British Museum, where visitors to London may now see it. Incidentally, Lewis Carroll's first title for the book was Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Mrs. Hargreaves died in 1934 at the age of 82, but Alice lives on, ever a child and ever adorable.