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This handsome Limited Editions Club edition of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Dodgson (1832-1898), is noteworthy for a trifecta of virtues for being in exceptional, truly fine condition, for retaining both the original glassine wrapper and slipcase, and for being signed by Alice Hargreaves, inspiration for the titular "Alice", and by the printer and typographer, Eric Warde.There were 1,500 copies issued of this 1932 Limited Editions Club edition, bound in extensively gilt-tooled and illustrated red Morocco, issued in a glassine dust wrapper and housed in a blue cloth slipcase with spine illustrations mirroring those of the binding. The in-text illustrations are by John Tenniel. This copy s colophon is hand-numbered "956" and signed "Frederic Warde" below his printed name. Within a debossed panel on the recto of the blank preceding the frontispiece is the signature of "Alice Hargreaves". It is noteworthy that Alice resisted signing other editions during her lifetime and signed only some copies of this edition (reportedly fewer than 1,000 and perhaps as few as 500) just a few years before her death.Condition of this copy is magnificently fine, certainly owing to the protection of both the original glassine dust jacket and the slipcase. Both the binding and contents are immaculate, with no discernible wear or deterioration. The sole "flaw" noted is mild differential toning to the endpapers corresponding to the dust jacket flaps, confirming that this copy has spent life jacketed. The original glassine dust jacket quite rare is worn and toned, with various tears and perimeter losses. Its chief virtues lie in remaining present and in having protected the splendid book beneath. The publisher s slipcase is near fine, with only trivial hints of wear to extremities and slight color shift to the spine. Lewis Carroll made numerous published contributions to mathematics and politics, publishing his first book at the age of 28. Exhaustively titled A Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry, Systematically Arranged, with Formal Definitions, Postulates, and Axioms, this work may have inadvertently triggered Carroll s gift for encapsulating the plausibly ridiculous. Despite his scholarly career and publications, it was Alice s Adventures in Wonderland that would introduce and define him to posterity. Akin to how the fictional story begins, the real one started when Carroll had to come up with an impromptu tale to entertain a child while sitting along a river bank. Carroll s famous protagonist was based on the young Alice Pleasance Hargreaves, nee Liddell (1852-1934), whose father Henry George Liddell became the new dean of Christ s Church, where Carroll lectured on mathematics. The middle of three children, Alice was not yet four when Carroll first made her acquaintance. Carroll retained a close and trusted friendship with the Liddell family for seven years, during which time "his emotional attachment toAlicegrew and ripened, and for some seven years he lived the charmed life of a cherished friend and sometimes consort to the beautiful, impetuous child.In late June 1863, however, some event that he recorded on a page in his diary, but which aDodgsonheir later razored out, caused a breach in the relationship… Although he and theLiddellsmanaged again to be civil to one another…Dodgsonkept a formal distance from his 'ideal child friend'".Alice asks at the outset of the adventure: what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations? Carroll s story and life surely answers the question. "HadDodgson [Carroll]never written theAlicebooks, he would have earned a nod or a paragraph in various specialized histories: mathematics and logic, photography, parliamentary voting systems, and games and puzzles. But theAlicebooks have earned him a place in the firmament of the great, for they are not only acts of imaginative genius but they also revolutionized writing for children." (ODNB).
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