Alice in Wonderland notched card construction & building set

Notched construction card set, featuring John Tenniel's illustrations from Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's adventures in Wonderland'.

Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures in Wonderland was published in December 1865, an expanded version of the story he had told to Alice Liddell and her sisters during a boat trip in July 1862. The story was acclaimed and a number of reprints were made in the next few years. Carroll published a sequel Through the Looking glass and what Alice found there in 1872. Both books were illustrated by John Tenniel and his images of Alice, the White Rabbit, Mad Hatter and the other inhabitants of Wonderland have become synonymous with Carroll's stories.

Various ephemera relating to the Alice stories have been issued over the years. The Notched card construction set has been re-issued in facsimile a number of times. The notches are intended to make the building of card houses easier. They are an adaptiation of the playing cards issued some time earlier. The cards are illustrated with the characters from the Alice stories and use the Tenniel illustrations.

Carroll was full of ideas for entertaining his child friends: he was inventive and took delight in showing off his ideas. He kept a black bag which was filled with ideas for whiling away the long tedium of railway journeys or rainy days.. 'Ideas for games and puzzles, riddles and charades beseiged his mind at all hours, sustaining his own sense of wonder and providing a consant source of entertainment' (Fisher, p. 11). The card game and notched construction card set, if his own invention, would have been almost too easy for this ingenious inventor of tricks and puzzles.

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