Editing John Tenniel (section)

==Early life==
[[File:John Tenniel Conspiracy.jpg|thumb|John Tenniel, ''A Conspiracy'', oil on panel, August 1850 (Private collection, UK)|300x300px]]
Tenniel was born in [[Bayswater]], West London, to John Baptist Tenniel, a fencing and dancing master of [[Huguenot]] descent,{{sfn |Simpson |1994 |p=12}}<ref>{{cite ODNB|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/36458|title=Tenniel, Sir John|last = Curtis|first = L. Perry Jr.| author-link = L. Perry Curtis}}</ref> and Eliza Maria Tenniel. Tenniel had five siblings; two brothers and three sisters. One sister, Mary, was later to marry Thomas Goodwin Green, owner of the pottery that produced [[Cornishware]]. Tenniel was a quiet and introverted person, both as a boy and as an adult. He was content to remain firmly out of the limelight and seemed unaffected by competition or change. His biographer Rodney Engen wrote that Tenniel's "life and career was that of the supreme gentlemanly outside, living on the edge of respectability."{{sfn |Engen |1991 |p=1}}

In 1840, Tenniel, while practising fencing, received a serious eye wound from his father's foil, which had accidentally lost its protective tip. Over the years, Tenniel gradually lost sight in his right eye;<ref>[[Martin Gardner]], ''The Annotated Alice'', p. 223.</ref> he never told his father of the severity of the wound, as he did not wish to upset him further.{{sfn |Wakeling |2014 |pp=67–68}}

In spite of a tendency towards high art, Tenniel was already known and appreciated as a humourist. His early companionship with [[Charles Samuel Keene|Charles Keene]] fostered his talent for scholarly caricature.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911 |inline=y |wstitle=Tenniel, Sir John |volume=26 |page=626}}</ref>{{sfn |Wakeling |2014 |p=67}}