Description
AN EXTRAORDINARILY RARE AND IMPORTANT INSCRIBED PRESENTATION FIRST EDITION OF ARGUABLY THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT CLASSIC OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, ONE OF 24 PRESENTATION COPIES RECORDED IN LEWIS CARROLL’S DIARY, ONE OF VERY FEW TO BEAR A FULL DATE OF PRESENTATION IN CARROLL’S HAND
CARROLL, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With Forty-Two Illustrations by John Tenniel. London: Macmillan & Co., 1866 [1865]. WITH: Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan & Co., 1872 [1871]. Together, two volumes. Small octavo, modern full crushed red morocco gilt, all edges gilt, original cloth covers of both works bound in at rear. Housed in custom cloth slipcase.
Exceptionally rare inscribed and dated presentation copy of the first authorized London edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, one of only 24 copies received by Carroll on November 11, 1865 and noted by him in his diary. Inscribed by Carroll to one of his child friends: “Bessie Hulme, from the Author, Nov. 14, 1865.” One of very few presentation copies that bears a full date, one of the great rarities in all literature.
Elizabeth “Bessie” Hulme, born in 1852, was the oldest of three daughters of the Reverend and Mrs. Samuel Joseph Hulme. Rev. Hulme was Rector of St. Martin’s, Carfax, Oxford from 1863 to 1872. Hulme was one of Carroll’s “child friends,” and Carroll made a note of his photographic portrait of her, taken May 7, 1867, in his diary: “Mrs. Hulme brought her three girls, Bessie, Kate and Alice, to be photographed, and I got several good negatives” (Green, Diaries, 258). While documented in Carroll’s own catalogue of his photographs, none of the photographs of Bessie and her sisters have been located (Lewis Carroll, Photographer, 262). This is the 1866 London edition, the first regularly published edition, preceded by the virtually unobtainable 1865 London edition (cancelled by the author because of the poor printing of Tenniel’s famous plates) and the exceptionally rare 1866 New York edition (not authorized by Carroll—made up from the sheets of the original 1865 edition with a new American title-page), of which only 1000 copies were issued. This superior edition was published by Macmillan on November 9. Carroll notes in his diary that he “received from Macmillan a copy of the new impression of Alice—very far superior to the old, and in fact a perfect piece of artistic printing” (Diaries, 236). He writes Macmillan again on November 12: “I duly received 24 copies of Alice yesterday. Please send me another 50 with all speed. I am going to recall all the copies I can of the old impression, and substitute the new” (Lewis Carroll and the House of Macmillan, 39). The Hulme copy is dated only two days after Carroll’s letter to Macmillan, and is one of the few presentation copies that bears a full date. On a blank leaf opposite the entry for October 12, 1864 in his personal diary, Carroll jotted down the names of the recipients of the copies of the book he received from Macmillan. Bessie Hulme’s name is eighth on the list. Of the presentation copies that have appeared on the market in the past three decades, none is dated. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its hardly less famous sequel Through the Looking Glass, although ostensibly written for children are unique among ‘juveniles’ in appealing equally if not more strongly to adults. Written by an Oxford don, a clergyman, and a professional mathematician, they abound in characters—the White Knight, the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter, Humpty Dumpty—who are part of everybody’s mental furniture. And the philosophic profundity of scores, if not hundreds, of these characters’ observations, long household words wherever English is spoken, gains mightily from the delicious fantasy of their setting” (PMM, 354). Together with a first edition, second issue of Through the Looking Glass, with “wade” corrected to “wabe” on page 21.
Both volumes in fine condition, beautifully bound, with the original cloth covers bound in. An extraordinary and important inscribed presentation copy of this most scarce and desirable classic of children’s literature.
