Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Macmillan, 1866.
First UK published edition, first issue. Pale blue endpapers (rather than the more usual dark green), the inverted 'S' in the last line of Contents page and with page 30 incorrectly numbered. Original red cloth, gilt-stamped, spine lettered in gilt and all edges gilt. Burn & Co. binder's ticket on lower pastedown. Forty two illustrations after John Tenniel. A very good copy indeed which is bright and clean, with a neat superficial repair to the front joint at the head of the spine and some minor ink marks to the rear panel, but boards crisp and cloth largely unworn. Bookplate to pastedown. Internally exceptionally clean and fresh with front hinge intact and rear hinge starting but entirely sound. An extremely well preserved copy of this landmark of children's literature.
Before 'Alice', children's literature consisted mainly of educational booklets or moralistic tales. That all changed when an Oxford academic by the name of Charles Dodgson spent an afternoon recounting nonsensical and logic defying ramblings to amuse the daughters of Henry Liddell. So enthralled was Alice Liddell that she implored Dodgson to write it down, a task he began the next day. By 1865, having expanded and elaborated the original story and engaged the services of illustrator John Tenniel, the book was ready to be published.
An initial printing of Alice was undertaken by the Clarendon Press in Oxford in early 1865 and was recalled by Carroll, as John Tenniel considered the printing unsatisfactory. The story was then printed by Richard Clay in time for Christmas of that year, the title page dated 1866, and this forms the first commercially published edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The success of the book was immediate, its influence far reaching and opened the floodgates to a regular procession of successful children's novels to follow.
PMM 354 (note); Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch 46.
Stock ID: 32562
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