Sir – Much as I should like it to be true that the door from the University Museum into the Pitt Rivers Museum ‘was the inspiration for John Tenniel’s drawing of a door in Through the Looking Glass, surmounted by the words “Queen Alice”’, I’m afraid Chris Koenig’s sources have let him down.
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, with Tenniel’s famous illustrations, was first published in 1871, some 14 years before work began on building the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Moreover, as is made clear on page 272 of Martin Gardner’s excellent The Annotated Alice, Tenniel had used the same Romanesque doorway in illustrations for Punch and elsewhere from as early as 1853, before work to build the University Museum had begun.
Perhaps, however, the idea of inscribing ‘Pitt Rivers Collection’ above the door in the Natural History Museum was inspired by Tenniel’s illustration? I doubt it, but it’s a nice idea — though not as nice as Mr Koenig’s.
Jeremy Coote, Oxford
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