INSCRIBED IN THE NAME OF LEWIS CARROLL
An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves Alice
Privately Printed for the Author, 1876.
First edition, printed on Towgood Fine paper. 32mo, single bifolium as issued. Author's presentation copy, inscribed to the cover, "For May from Lewis Carroll. Dec. 3. 1877." A near fine copy with a pin hole through both sheets.
The Easter Greeting was published to be given away with copies of The Hunting of the Snark, but a letter from Dodgson to Craig of May 1876 suggests they were also distributed separately, "Please be prepared to sell Easter Greetings separately, if asked for; I have been asked if I will allow them to be sold and of course I have no objection."
In his 1924 bibliography, Sidney Williams claimed the Easter Greeting to be Dodgson's rarest work after the 1865 Alice on the basis that the majority of copies encountered in commerce were later printings. Whilst a profusion of reprints do exist, Williams had rather overestimated the scarcity of this publication and later retracted the claim. The text was later incorporated into the 1887 edition of of the Alice books.
Mary Forshall (known as May) was the daughter of the Highgate physician Francis Hyde Forshall, an acquaintance of Charles Dodgson's. In his diaries, Dodgson mentions May "came to be photographed" on 3 December 1877.
Wiliams, Madan, Green 116
Stock ID: 35746
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