1920 Rare Book - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
An attractive early Grosset & Dunlap edition bringing both of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books together in one volume, illustrated throughout with the classic drawings of John Tenniel and retaining its striking pictorial cloth binding.
Author: Lewis Carroll.
Title: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Publisher: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, undated. (1920s).
Edition: Early Grosset & Dunlap edition. Complete in one volume.
Language: English.
Pages: 146, 146 pages, plus publisher’s catalogue.
Size: 7.5 x 5 inches.
Binding: Very good original tan cloth binding, with black lettering and rules to the spine and a striking orange and black pictorial front cover depicting Alice confronting the White Rabbit. Light general age toning, rubbing and minor wear to the extremities, with the pictorial design remaining particularly bright and attractive, as shown. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content, clean, complete and firmly bound, with light age toning and occasional minor spotting or marks. The endpapers show some expected toning. Publisher’s catalogue present at the rear.
Illustrations: Illustrated throughout with 54 black-and-white illustrations by John Tenniel, as stated on the title page, including many of the celebrated images inseparable from the original visual identity of Alice, the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the inhabitants of Looking-Glass world.
Estimate: USD 150–200.
The book:
This attractive Grosset & Dunlap edition combines Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in a single volume, with the two works separately paginated. Carroll’s extraordinary mixture of fantasy, wordplay, logic and absurdity remains one of the defining achievements of Victorian children’s literature. Alice’s pursuit of the White Rabbit leads her into a world governed by shifting scale, impossible conversations and wonderfully unreasonable rules, while the sequel carries her through the looking glass into a landscape structured around a fantastical game of chess.
The publisher’s boldly illustrated cloth binding gives this edition particular charm. Its image of Alice and the formally dressed White Rabbit transforms Tenniel’s Victorian characters into a bright early twentieth-century decorative design, while the interior preserves the familiar original illustrations that have accompanied Carroll’s stories for generations.
The author:
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), an Oxford mathematician, logician, photographer and writer. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1865, grew from a story told to Alice Liddell and her sisters during a boating excursion. Its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, followed in 1871.
Together the two books created one of literature’s most enduring imaginary worlds. Carroll’s playful manipulation of language, logic and social convention has allowed the stories to transcend their origins as children’s books, inspiring generations of writers, artists, illustrators, filmmakers and collectors.
The illustrator:
Sir John Tenniel (1820–1914) was a British illustrator and political cartoonist best known for his long association with Punch and for creating the original published illustrations for Carroll’s Alice books. Working closely with Carroll, Tenniel established the visual appearance of Alice and nearly every major character in Wonderland and Looking-Glass world.
His White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, Caterpillar and Queen of Hearts became so closely associated with Carroll’s text that later generations of illustrators have invariably worked in their shadow. Editions retaining Tenniel’s original imagery remain especially appealing for readers and collectors who want Alice in the form most closely connected with its Victorian origins.