Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

CARROLL, Lewis. [Dodgson.

Item Number: 3014

London: MacMillan and Co. 1866 &, 1872.

First editions of the author’s classic work’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Octavo, two volumes. Bound in early 20th-century full red morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe. Gilt vignettes to front and rear panels of each volume, gilt tooling on spine. All edges gilt, silk endpapers. Original cloth covers and spine bound in at rear. In fine condition. An attractive set.

Alice's Adventures were "born on a golden afternoon" in July 1862, when the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) took the three small daughters of Dean Liddell of Christ Church on a boating trip up the Isis. Carroll delighted the three children by relating Alice's adventures, and eventually promised his favorite among the three, Alice Liddell, to write the story down for her. Through the Looking-Glass can be seen as a mirror image of the Alice's Adventures. For example, the latter begins outdoors in the warmth of May 4 and uses the imagery of playing cards, while the former begins indoors on a snowy, cold November 4 and uses the imagery of chess. "The two Alice books completed the reinstatement of the imagination, so long disapproved of by the opponents of fairy stories, to its proper place. ‘Alice is, in a word, a book of that extremely rare kind which will belong to all the generations to come until the language becomes obsolete’" (Carpenter & Prichard, 102).