Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland [and] Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

CARROLL, Lewis. Illustrated by John Tenniel.

$1,500.00

Item Number: 145682

London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1953.

Finely bound editions of Lewis Carroll’s beloved children’s classic. Octavo, two volumes, bound in three quarter navy crushed levant morocco with gilt titles and ruling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, frontispiece in color to each volume. In near fine condition. A very 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).