Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.

DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge]; Carroll.

Item Number: 63012

Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1869.

First edition printed in America of the author’s classic work. Octavo, original red cloth, all edges gilt, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, triple gilt ruled to the front and rear panels. Illustrated by John Tenniel, text illustrated. In near fine condition, bookplates. An exceptional example.

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).