David Day, an Island boy and Vic High grad, has sold three million — maybe four million — books, many of them based on the world of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Then he tackled Alice in Wonderland and she tackled him back — for 18 years — before he came out with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Decoded. It was published in September, just in time for the 150th anniversary of the original story by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, his pen name.
And a “mind-bending” exercise it was, Day said.
Tolkien had 37,000 years of fantasy history to draw on, but Day’s 41st book, about the adventures of a curious little girl in a pinafore who spent time down the most famous rabbit hole in history, had him digging much deeper.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the most translated single work in the literary world, Day said. “Not just in 176 languages, but multiple times in each language. There are over 400 different French translations and 500 German versions.”
His own book, scholarly but accessible, includes 320 pages replete with art on almost every page — from the pre-Raphaelites to Arthur Rackham, photographs to full-page reproductions of Old Masters. It decodes the hidden meanings in Carroll’s famous work.
Day, an alumnus of the University of Victoria, started his literary career at a predecessor of the Times Colonist.
“The first payment I received for writing was earned at $1 an inch, when I wrote for the Victoria Daily Times newspaper on the inter-high school sports scene in Victoria,” he said in an email from Toronto, where he lives.
Now 68, Day graduated in 1966 from Victoria High School, where he was editor of the yearbook and school newspaper. In 1976, he graduated from UVic’s creative writing department.
“Also, I delivered newspapers for both the Times and the Colonist [at different times] when they were separate papers.”
What inspired his writing? “I suppose it was the early discovery that through writing, dreams could magically be given life in a waking world.”
> Read about Day's investigative take on the imaginings of Lewis Carroll
