Lewis Carroll: Hi John
Sir John Tenniel: Hi Charles
LC: John, I was wondering if you’d illustrate my new book for me?
JT: Sounds interesting, what’s it about?
LC: I haven’t figured that out yet but if you could just do the illustrations and then I can sort of fill in around it as I go
JT: Sorry?
LC: Yeah if you could just do some illustrations and then as I write the story we can always tweak them a bit to fit in or shuffle them around.
JT: I’m not sure this really makes-
LC: I’ve figured out how many pages the book’s going to be so you don’t need to worry about that – if you pick pages where you’ll have your illustrations and then that’ll give me a better idea of how many words I have to write to fit in around them and that sort of thing.
JT: Err –
LC: Anyway I’ve got to go, you get cracking on that, send me what you’ve got and we’ll take it from there.
several weeks later
LC: John – I’m not sure these pictures are really going to work. You see what you’ve drawn doesn’t really match what I’ve written at all. Also where you’ve put the pictures isn’t working too well with my page count (btw I’ve changed the page size we’re using now) I think we’re either going to have to take a picture out or add more pages in which case we’ll need more pictures. We’ve already spent quite a lot of time on this already and we need to go to print so if you can get that sorted by this afternoon that would be ideal. Also I forgot to mention it before but are we ok to have this as a printed banner, series of flyers, poster and flash game by close of play tomorrow?
(note: to my knowledge not actually what happened – may be allegorical)
