Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are considered to be his finest and most enduring achievement. They must also rank among the world's best-known children's images.
The Dalziel brothers were commissioned to engrave the boxwood blocks on which Tenniel had made his drawings. The engravers advised Lewis Carroll that the engraved blocks should not be used for printing the illustrations in the books but instead they would act as the masters from which electrotype copies would be made. It was from these electrotypes that all the illustrations in the Alice books were printed with a resultant loss of definition.
In 1985 the original wood engraved blocks were discovered in deed boxes belonging to Macmillan, the original publishers. Jonathan Stephenson at the Rocket Press was awarded the prestigious job of printing 250 sets from the blocks (the first time that they had been used) for worldwide distribution. No further sets will be printed.