CARROLL, Lewis (pseudonym for: Charles DODGSON); John TENNIEL (illustrator). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With Forty-Two Illustrations.

Alice in Wonderland

CARROLL, Lewis (pseudonym for: Charles DODGSON); John TENNIEL (illustrator). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With Forty-Two Illustrations. London: [ R. Clay for ] Macmillan and Co . 1866.

[offered with:]

CARROLL, Lewis (pseudonym for: Charles DODGSON); John TENNIEL (illustrator). Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. With Fifty Illustrations. London: MacMillan & Co . 1872 (but 1871).

Two volumes, 8vo. Bound in twentieth-century full red morocco by Bayntun (rear turn-ins signed in gilt), with, respectively, playing cards and rabbits and lioins and flowers gilt to spines and the White Rabbit and the White Queen gilt to upper boards, spines lettered directly in gilt, original cloth and rear endpaper bound at end ( Through the Looking Glass with original cloth spine also bound in), both housed in a twentieth-century cloth slipcase; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland : pp. [12], 192; Through the Looking Glass : pp. [12], 224, [4]; numerous in-text lithographic illustrations by John Tenniel; a few minute scuffs to boards, cloth slipcase rubbed and worn; a few very neatly repaired closed tears to margins, light marks to pp. 112–13 of Alice in Wonderland and the odd spot to Through the Looking Glass ; otherwise fine copies in attractive Bayntun bindings; 1866 gift inscription ‘A.S.H. from E.M.’ to half-title of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , washed ownership inscription to half-title of Through the Looking Glass , Sotheran’s ink stamp, Sackville Street, to front free endpaper versos, with loosely inserted manuscript note referencing Sotheran’s catalogues of the 1970s and 1980s.

First published edition of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , reset by Clay’s from a copy of the recalled first edition, first issue of 1865, offered with the first edition of the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass , both beautifully bound in red morocco by Bayntun with the original cloth bound in.

The first edition, first issue of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) was swiftly recalled at the request of the illustrator, John Tenniel, who was displeased with the quality of the illustrations in print; on 2 August 1865, Carroll agreed to go ahead with a reprint. Two thousand copies of the recalled first issue were printed at the Clarendon Press in Oxford for Macmillan.

Williams writes that ‘it has been questioned whether the First Edition was ever published, in the strict sense of being on sale to the public and sent to the copyright libraries [the British Museum copy was acquired in 1952’, quoting a letter from the author which ‘suggests that only Dodgson’s 50 presentation copies left the publisher’s offices’. One thousand copies using the remaining sheets were bound in England with a tipped-in title-page and shipped to New York, published by Appleton & Co. in 1866, the sale to America having been authorised on 10 April. It is unclear precisely when this first published edition was published; Carroll had received proofs from Clay’s as early as 11 August 1865, and the British Museum copy was received on 14 November 1865.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is here offered alongside the first edition of Carroll’s sequel, Through the Looking-Glass ; although the title-page is dated 1872, the book was in fact published in 1871, in time for Christmas, selling fifteen thousand copies within weeks of publication. Through the Looking-Glass contains the famous Jabberwocky poem and introduces the Red Queen, the White Queen, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and the White Knight. It was intended for publication in 1870 under the title Looking-Glass House and What Alice Saw There , with forty-two illustrations as opposed to the fifty which would appear in print.

Both works are bound in red morocco by Bayntun’s, as mentioned by Lovett, with the original red cloth bound at the rear.

Lovett 3a and 13a; Williams 46 and 84 .

SKU: 2126643