First UK published edition. Pale blue endpapers. Original red cloth with gilt lettering to the spine and vignette to the upper cover. All edges gilt. Presentation copy inscribed by Tenniel to the half-title, "with [monogram] JT's kind regards/ Xmas 1867" with an original pencil drawing of the Mad Hatter. Forty two illustrations after John Tenniel. A good copy, rebacked preserving original spine. A number of pages frayed or with repaired closed tears. A couple of illustrations with early hand-colouring, now mostly erased.

An exceptional copy of the 1866 Alice, one of only two known copies with an original drawing by Tenniel and the only one remaining in private hands.
This copy appears in Justin Schiller's 1990 census of drawings made by Tenniel as part of inscriptions in books. The census locates only five books in which Tenniel added a drawing to an inscription. Two were copies of the 1866 Alice, and the other three were in copies of Through The Looking Glass. The present inscription and drawing was published in Frances Sarzano's monograph 1948 Sir John Tenniel (p.57), where the book is noted as being the property of H.M. Lingford. It was later sold when Lingford's Lewis Carroll collection came up at Sothebys in 1951. The only other copy of the 1866 Alice with an original drawing by Tenniel was given by the artist to Marian Pritchett for Christmas in 1865. It was later owned by the collector Charles C. Auchincloss and sold at his sale at Parke-Bernet New York (29th-30th November, 1961, lot 135). It is now in the Alfred C. Berol Collection at New York University, which makes the present example the only remaining copy in private hands.
Carroll wrote Alice in 1864, expanded from tales told to amuse Alice Liddell, with John Tenniel engaged as illustrator. An initial printing, 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, and the combination of Tenniel's illustrations and Dodgson's story opened the floodgates to a regular procession of successful children's novels to follow.

PROVENANCE: John Tenniel (1820-1914), his presentation inscription; H.M. Lingford (1891-1950), sold with his collection at Sothebys London, 6 November 1951, lot 201 (Bought by Commin's for £52).

Schiller 4b. Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch 46.

Stock ID: 44666