Twenty-six magical images gleaned from almost two hundred wood engravings made by George A. Walker for extremely rare editions of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There) published by Cheshire Cat Press in 1988 and 1998, respectively.

George A. Walker is an award-winning wood engraver, book artist and author whose courses in book arts and printmaking at OCAD University in Toronto, where he is Associate Professor, have been offered continuously since 1985. His artworks are held in collections ranging from the Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), New York City and he has had over 15 solo exhibitions as well as been included in more than 100 group shows. Among many book projects-both trade and limited edition-Walker has illustrated 2 hand-printed books by internationally acclaimed author Neil Gaiman. Walker also illustrated the first Canadian edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, both published by the Cheshire Cat Press. The Cheshire Cat Press is a partnership between Andy Malcolm and George Walker which continues to publish limited edition books featuring the writing of Lewis Carroll.

George Walker was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art in 2002 for his contribution to the cultural area of Book Arts. He is also a member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto where he was featured in a solo exhibition of his books and printmaking in the spring of 2019. Walker's latest book-length project presents the iconic life of Hollywood silent-film star Mary Pickford in a suite of 87 wood engravings.

George A. Walker's profile page

• Short-listed, ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year

'Alice in Wonderland has inspired the imaginations of generations of readers, writers, and artists the world over. In A Is for Alice, the visceral merriment and eccentricity at play in Lewis Carroll's original masterwork shine brightly. Via twenty-six of his intricate wood engravings on the subject (which number close to an amazing two hundred), expert bookmaker and printer George A. Walker offers a glimpse of some of the most memorable moments and characters of Wonderland fame.

'The book's release is a mere three months before the highly anticipated blockbuster Return to Wonderland; while this may be fortuitous timing, A Is for Alice is strikingly different from Tim Burton's prismatic feature. Walker's Wonderland is captured in bold slashes -- stark, physical renderings of movement and emotion in solid wood. Each image offered here provides evidence of its creation; there is a reminder, with each turn of the page, of the hand and thought that guided each groove. Walker's ability to impress such great detail (as in the grain of both the fur of the Cheshire Cat, and the branch upon which he is perched) in a print made with woodblocks is remarkable, and is a testament to the quarter-century Walker has dedicated to creating books.

'The author's careful selection of passages and images encourages readers to take as little or as much time with the text as they wish. The woodcut images themselves provide plenty to ponder (feeling at times to be actual snapshots of the fantastic and bizarre heroine's journey) and the alphabetical layout offers similarly brief, yet telling, almost anecdotal-feeling narrative. Carroll's charm is ever-present in Walker's playful choices for the letter's representatives, ranging from the understated 'C is for Caterpillar' to the 'U is for the Jack (Knave) Under Arrest.' Wonderland is nothing if not a realm of wordplay, and Walker successfully continues the game.

'At the heart of this book is the art of the book, pages kissed by poetic samples of Carroll's writing and bound using artisan techniques onsite at The Porcupine's Quill headquarters. It is a high-quality, collectable edition in which fans of the Alice stories, bibliophiles, and young readers will delight.'

ForeWord Magazine

'... a treat for fans of the tale and poetry alike, highly recommended.'

MidWest Book Review

'Walker is an artist of many talents and media -- and many contradictions. A figurative artist, he is interested in illuminating abstractions cast up from his unconscious. Literate and articulate, he expresses complex thoughts and ideas in singular images. He published a book without text, letting the images carry the narrative. A generous nature can give way suddenly to a disquisition on social inequality that he also translates into the grammar of picture making. There is a startling muteness and directness to his pictures, yet they are intended to effect change, often in the immediate world around him, or in the viewer's perceptions of the world around them. The technical dimension of his artistic practice is privileged and apparent in the work, yet the art far exceeds material, method and process. His art is often grounded in the process of automatism, allowing for the unconscious to speak directly and spontaneously in images, even as his technique embraces the painstaking and precise nomenclature of wood engraving, block printing and bookbinding. The immediacy of his messages and their meanings are the product of careful rendering, circumspection and consideration.'

Devil's Artisan