Lot Details
Lot 39
CARROLL, LEWIS (CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON) The Nursery "Alice".
London: MacMillan, 1890. Second (first published) edition, one of the 100 presentation copies inscribed by Carroll on March 25th, 1890, this copy inscribed in his characteristic purple ink: "For Olive,/from the Author./Mar. 25, 1890." Publisher's chromolithographed boards with cloth spine, the covers designed by E. Gertrude Thomson, housed in a morocco backed slipcase. 10 x 7 1/2 inches; 56 [8] pp., frontispiece and 19 chromolithographed illustrations in the text after John Tenniel, with the rare slip advertising Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno laid-in. The covers somewhat scratched and rubbed, the spine and elsewhere with light thumbsoiling, quite clean within, letters to the verso of slip in a child's hand, with the small booklabel of Thomas and Jania Erwin.
An inscribed copy of Lewis Carroll's The Nursery "Alice," envisioned as a simpler version of his 1866 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with Tenniel's illustrations enlarged and printed in color. Similar to his earlier Alice, Carroll was displeased with the quality the first 10,000 sheets printed on toned paper, describing them as "far too bright and gaudy," and ordered all new sheets printed on white paper. Of the rejected first sheets, 4000 were sent to America for sale (with replaced title pages dated 1890) and the remaining 6000 were bound and sold as "The People's Edition" in 1891 (but retaining the 1889 on the title page). The present copy is from the second edition but is considered the first published edition as it was printed and issued to Carroll's liking in early 1890. Carroll wrote on March 7th, 1890 that that he had received "a finished set of the sheets of The Nursery Alice. It is a great success. We can now publish at Easter." About two weeks later, Carroll recorded in his diary entry on March 25th 1890 that he: "managed to go to London, to write in over a hundred copies of The Nursery Alice" (Diary 8 p. 507). The current copy is one of these 100 presentation copies. The text also includes Carroll's Easter and Christmas greetings as well as specimen page advertising the manuscript edition of Alice. This copy further includes the rare printed advertising slip missing from most copies.
Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch. The Lewis Carroll Handbook, 216.
C The Julius and Theodore Cohn Library
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