Alice, seen from behind with her hands clasped at her back, looks up at a large striped cat grinning from the bough of a tree. The picture is L-shaped, leaving a blank space at right where the text ran. The artist's monogram is at lower left, and the engravers' name, Dalziel, is cut near Alice's feet. John Tenniel drew it for the chapter "Pig and Pepper" in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice is startled to see the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough a few yards off; it only grins, but it has very long claws and a great many teeth, so she decides it ought to be treated with respect. Later in the scene the Cat vanishes slowly, beginning with the end of its tail and ending with the grin, which stays behind after the rest has gone. The V&A credits Tenniel's interpretations of the characters with helping to establish the book's success. Only 31 of his pencil sketches for it are known to survive; ten are bound into Carroll's own copy of the withdrawn first printing, now owned by Christ Church and the Bodleian in Oxford.

This impression comes from the German translation published by Macmillan in 1869. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published by Macmillan in London in 1865.