Rare Finds - A Guide to Rare Book Collecting

The story behind the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is now legend in the book world. Charles Dodgson originally handwrote and illustrated a charming story for his child friend Alice Liddell entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Three years later, at the insistence of a friend, Dodgson, using the pen name Lewis Carroll, arranged to publish the manuscript with illustrations by John Tenniel, under the title Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Two thousand copies of this first edition were printed in May of 1865; Carroll requested fifty advance copies to present to friends. In July, Tenniel complained to Carroll that he was dissatisfied with the printing of the illustrations, and after much debate the two agreed to recall all of the presentation copies that Carroll had sent out, promising replacements from the new printing.

Of the remaining copies from the original press run, one thousand copies were sold to the New York publisher Appleton. Shortly thereafter, Alice was published in America with a new title page. (Only about twenty copies with the London 1865 title page are known today, making it virtually unobtainable.)
Carroll’s brilliant mix of rigorous logic and whimsical fancy, coupled with Tenniel’s illustrations, gave us the first work for children to leave moral education behind, liberating children’s stories from sentimental shackles. Alice was an immediate sensation. The Appleton edition is virtually the earliest unobtainable edition, preceding the first published London edition. We offer a lovely copy of this, the first American edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, unrestored in original cloth.