DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge ('Lewis Carroll'). Through the Looking-Glass, and what Alice found there. London: Macmillan, 1872.
No VAT on hammer price or buyer's premium. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known by his nom de plume of 'Lewis Carroll', was one of the most polymathematical of Victorians -- even by the standards of that eclectic epoch -- who was by turns best-selling children's author; Oxford don and disciple of Euclid who wrote on logic and was remembered by his pupils and students as an inspiring teacher of mathematics; artist and photographer (whose own illustrations enliven Alice's Adventures Underground); inventor of games and puzzles such as 'Doublets' (the subject of a competition in Vanity Fair); and writer of monographs on the reform of voting systems and the iniquities of vivisection. The Carroll books in the Gloucester collection are few, but very carefuly selected, and include some wonderful rarities.
DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge ('Lewis Carroll'). Through the Looking-Glass, and what Alice found there. London: Macmillan, 1872.

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DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge ('Lewis Carroll'). Through the Looking-Glass, and what Alice found there. London: Macmillan, 1872.

8° (183 x 125 mm). 50 illustrations after John Tenniel. (Scattered spots on first and last leaves.) Red morocco, gilt-stamped in the style of the cloth binding, spine gilt-lettered, gilt edges (extremities rubbed). Provenance: Alice Pleasance Liddell (signature; sale, Sotheby's, 3 April 1928, lot 324) -- Sir R. Leicester Harmsworth (inscription; sale, Sotheby's, 26 March 1947, lot 2900).

FIRST EDITION, ALICE'S COPY, SIGNED -- THE DEDICATION COPY, PRESENTED TO THE ORIGINAL ALICE BY DODGSON IN A RED MOROCCO BINDING. The printed dedication to Alice is concealed at the end of the book in the form of a beautiful acrostic poem beginning 'A boat, beneath a sunny sky': the first letter of each line, if taken in order, spells out 'Alice Pleasance Liddell'. Dodgson began requesting from Macmillan specially bound copies of his books for presentations in 1865 when he asked for a vellum-bound copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - this was famously recalled due to printing problems, and is now in the Harcourt Amory Collection at Harvard. A copy of the 1866 Alice was bound in blue vellum for Alice Lidell; this is now in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its hardly less famous sequel Through the Looking Glass... abound in characters... who are part of everybody's mental furniture. And the philosophic profundity... of these characters' observations, long household words wherever English is spoken, gains mightily from the delicious fantasy of their setting' (PMM 354). First state of page 21, with the misprint 'wade' for 'wabe' in the second line of the poem 'Jabberwocky', and with the pagination for both pages 95 and 98 (no priority). Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch 84.
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