Artists in Wonderland: Pre-Raphaelite Adventures in Oxford

Artists in Wonderland: Pre-Raphaelite Adventures in Oxford.

Thomas Combe, of the Oxford University Press, and his wife Martha, were hugely important patrons of the young John Everett Millais and Charles Alston Collins. The Combes went on to establish strong bonds with the sculpture Thomas Woolner and especially with William Holman Hunt, who visited the Combes in the Oxford suburb of Jericho on many occasions. Thomas Combe also oversaw the publication of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', whose author befriended and photographed these artists, their associates, and their families, including the Rossettis and another Oxford man of immense artistic importance to the movement: John Ruskin.

Mark Davies is an Oxford local historian, guide, and author with a particular interest in the non-University aspects of the city's past. The Pre-Raphaelite association with Oxford has several overlaps with one of his principal interests, namely the Oxford realities which underlie Lewis Carroll's 'Alice'. He is…