"CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER!": FIRST EDITIONS OF ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND AND THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, IN FULL BAYNTUN-RIVIERE STYLE PICTORAL BINDING

CARROLL, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. WITH: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan and Company, 1866, 1872. Two volumes. Octavo, modern full Bayntun-Riviere style red morocco gilt with multi-color pictoral inlays on front covers, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, original red cloth bound in. $23,000.

First editions of "the greatest of all English stories for children" (Muir, 139).

"Historians of children's literature universally agree that the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland marks the liberation of children's books from the restraining hand of the moralists… 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). First published and authorized English edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, preceded only by the extraordinarily rare suppressed 1865 London edition, of which only about 20 copies are known to exist, and the scarce New York edition of 1866. First edition, first issue of Through the Looking-Glass, with "wade" on page 21. Lewis Carroll Handbook 46 and 84. Williams 46. Contemporary ink owner gift inscription on half title of Alice.

Scattered foxing and occasional soiling to interiors. A beautifully bound pair of volumes.