Dalí's Surrealist Illustrations for Alice in Wonderland Reissued by Princeton

In 1969, Salvador Dalí created twelve color heliogravures and an original four-color etching for a deluxe edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published by Maecenas Press in approximately 2,700 copies. The project originated from a 1961 New York conference where Marcel Duchamp suggested artists would need to pass through the retina's mirror, inspiring Random House editor to commission Dalí. The illustrations, featuring pastel tones and surrealist motifs like melting clocks and elongated figures, reinterpret rather than describe the text. For decades, the original plates were accessible only to collectors, but in 2015, Princeton University Press reissued the edition for the 150th anniversary of Carroll's novel, making the images widely available. The William Bennett Gallery in New York holds the original works. Dalí also returned to Alice's image multiple times, creating a bronze sculpture. The 1969 edition remains a sought-after artist's book, now valued in the tens of thousands of dollars on the antiquarian market. The collaboration highlights the shared obsession with destabilizing ordinary perception between Carroll's Victorian fantasy and Dalí's surrealism.