Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Macmillan, 1866.
First published edition. Dark green endpapers, 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, slightly cocked, with some wear to the spine ends and a short split to the cloth of the rear joint. However it is bright and clean and, most importantly, entirely unrepaired, a quality rare in this book. Internally tight with hinges intact and a little sporadic foxing throughout. Overall an honest and well preserved copy.
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 official publication 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: 35916
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