"CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER!": FIRST EDITIONS OF ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND AND THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, WITH A FIRST EDITION OF THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK, UNIFORMLY BOUND

CARROLL, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. WITH: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. WITH: The Hunting of the Snark. London: Macmillan and Company, 1866, 1872, 1876. Three volumes. Octavo, twentieth-century full red calf gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. $26,000.

First editions of "the greatest of all English stories for children" (Muir, 139), together with Carroll's delightful "Odyssey of the Nonsensical," handsomely bound in matching full calf by Zaehnsdorf. With the original cloth for Looking-Glass and Snark bound in.

"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). The Hunting of the Snark was originally intended for inclusion in Sylvie and Bruno, but it's continually expanding scope justified its separate publication in 1876. "The poem describes with infinite humor the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature. It has been called the 'Odyssey of the Nonsensical,' 'a masterpiece with more nonsense to the foot than could be found in an acre of lesser stuff… The illustrations are noteworthy as a triumph of art over almost intractable material" (Williams & Madan). 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. Bookplates. Faint owner signatures in last two volumes.

Interiors quite clean, repaired tear to one leaf (139-40) in Alice; uniform bindings lovely, with mild toning to spines and top edge of front boards of first two volumes, small rub to spine of Snark. A beautiful set.