Carroll, Lewis

Alice's Adventures Under Ground

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London Macmillan and Co 1886 First Edition Being A Facsimile Of The Original Ms. Book Afterwards Developed Into "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland". With thirty-seven illustrations by the author. 8vo. Finely bound by the Bayntun-Riviere bindery in full crimson morocco, gilt panel on covers, spine lettered in gilt between two raised bands, hand marbled endleaves, all edges gilt. Original cloth cover bound in at the end. This unusual edition reproduces Carroll's own manuscript version of the Alice story, with his original illustrations and provides a fascinating insight into the evolution of "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland". Carroll first composed the story to entertain the three Liddell sisters, on the now famous rowing trip up the Thames, on 4th July 1862. Carroll's friend the Reverend Duckworth later recalled how on their return to Christchurch Deanery, the ten year old Alice Liddell said "Oh, Mr Dodgson, I wish you would write out Alice's adventures for me". "He said he should try, and and he afterwards told me that he sat up nearly the whole night, committing to a MS. book his recollections of the drolleries with which he had enlivened the afternoon." It is thought that this first manuscript version did not survive. Carroll produced a second, more elaborate version (reproduced for this edition), which he presented to Alice Liddell in November 1864, inscribed "A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child, in Memory of a Summer Day". This manuscript includes thirty-seven line drawings by Carroll, in his amateurish, but lively style. Unlike Tenniel's illustrations, Carroll's Alice is clearly modelled on the winsome, dark-haired Alice Liddell. Friends and colleagues were so impressed with the story that they persuaded Carroll to publish it the following year. He revised the manuscript considerably, adding material and changing the title to "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland". Twenty years later, in March 1885, he wrote to the now married Alice Liddell Hargreaves, to obtain her consent for a facsimile edition of the 1864 manuscript. "I have not seen it for about twenty years, so I am not by any means sure that the illustrations may not prove to be so awfully bad that to reproduce them would be absurd. There can be no doubt that I shall incur a charge of gross egotism in publishing it, but I don't care for that in the least, knowing that I have no such motive. Only, I think, considering the extraordinary popularity that the books have had (we have sold more than 120,000 of the two), there must be many who would like to see the original form." Mrs Hargreaves agreed to the idea and four months later, he wrote "After a great deal of casting about among photographers and zincographers I seem at last to have found out the man who will reproduce "Alice's Adventures Underground" in really first rate style. He has brought his things to Oxford and I am having all the photographs taken in my own studio, so that no one touches the manuscript book except myself." Five thousand copies of the facsimile edition were published on 22nd December 1886, with all profits being donated to children's homes and hospitals.

• GBP 695.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: 2931

• bookseller: George Bayntun (GREAT BRITAIN)