1907 Scarce 1stED - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Illustrated by Alice Ross
Scarce circa 1907 First Edition with the distinctive color illustrations of Alice E. Ross, complete with all five plates and retaining its charming original pictorial cloth binding.
Author: Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson].
Title: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With Illustrations in Colour by Alice Ross.
Publisher: Edinburgh: W. P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell; London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Ltd., undated [circa 1907]. Printed by Alexander Gardner, Paisley.
Edition: First Edition with the illustrations of Alice Ross, First Edition Thus.
Language: English.
Pages: 159 pages.
Size: 6.5 x 5 inches.
Binding: Very good original pale blue cloth binding, lettered in brown to the front board and spine, with the original oval color portrait of Alice mounted to the front cover. Light general rubbing, scattered small marks and soiling, with minor wear at the spine ends and corners, as shown. Hinges sound and binding firm. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Good to very good content, complete and firmly bound, with light age toning and occasional foxing or staining, principally affecting the endpapers. With an attractive original school presentation label to the front free endpaper recording the presentation of the book to Fasque Public School by James Coats, Junr., Esq., Ferguslie House, Paisley, in 1910, numbered 90. Some faint former pencil markings above the label, as shown. The principal text remains generally clean and the color plates are particularly well preserved.
Illustrations: Complete with all five full-page color illustrations by Alice Ross, including the portrait frontispiece of Alice and scenes depicting the Caucus-Race, Alice at the Duchess’s door, the Queen, and the Mock Turtle.
Estimate: USD 300–350.
The book: This scarce edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland belongs to the remarkable flowering of newly illustrated editions that appeared around 1907, when Lewis Carroll’s famous story became available to a new generation of artists. Alice Ross’s interpretation is particularly distinctive for its soft watercolor palette and unusually naturalistic portrayal of Alice, quite removed from John Tenniel’s familiar Victorian conception. Her young heroine appears throughout the five color plates, surrounded by Wonderland characters rendered with an appealing Edwardian delicacy.
Published by W. P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell in Edinburgh and now considerably less frequently encountered than many contemporary illustrated editions, the book is especially attractive in its original blue pictorial cloth. The 1910 Fasque Public School presentation label gives this copy an appealing period provenance only a few years after publication.
The illustrator: Alice E. Ross (fl. circa 1886–1937) was a British painter and illustrator active around the turn of the twentieth century. Her illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are among her best-known book illustrations and appeared during the important wave of newly illustrated editions of Carroll’s story in the early twentieth century.
Ross’s interpretation is notable for its gentle watercolor technique and portrait-like Alice, giving the familiar Wonderland episodes a softer and more Edwardian character. Complete copies retaining all five color plates and the original pictorial binding are increasingly difficult to find.
The author: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, photographer and Anglican deacon. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1865, grew from a story told to Alice Liddell and her sisters and became one of the most influential works of children’s literature.
Its combination of fantasy, linguistic play, satire and logical absurdity has inspired generations of artists and illustrators, making the various illustrated editions of Alice a collecting field in their own right.