Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

CARROLL, Lewis. [Dodgson.

Item Number: 88082

London: MacMillan and Co, 1872.

First edition of the author’s classic work. Octavo, original red cloth, gilt titles to the spine, gilt vignettes to the front and rear panels, triple gilt ruled. All edges gilt, frontispiece engraving with tissue guard present. With fifty illustrations by John Tenniel. In good condition with rubbing and wear to the extremities, some mottling to the cloth. Uncommon in the original cloth.

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).