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

CARROLL, Lewis.

Item Number: 122897

London: Macmillan and Co, 1932.

Finely bound example of these timeless children’s classic. Octavo, bound in full morocco by Riviere, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, inlay of Alice to the front and rear panels, gilt ruling and tooling to the front and rear panels, all edges gilt, inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, illustrated by John Tenniel. In fine condition. An exceptional presentation.

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).