Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice in Wonderland” keeps sneaking up on me. I’ve found two editions of it hiding among books and small items I’ve picked up in box lots at auctions over the past few months.
I can understand why so many people have bought and read the book: It’s a lovely nonsensical story about a little girl who is bored, craves adventure and finds it down a rabbit hole. It speaks to – and obviously has spoken to – many of us looking for our own escape routes, though short-lived.
A good friend, Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, who writes the Soul Rhythms blog, noticed one copy of the book at my home when she was visiting recently. The book wasn’t in great condition: The cloth cover was ripped in spots, the spine was detached, and someone had marred the front and back inside pages with pencil and paint. Remarkably, the other pages – although slightly faded – were intact.
It was published by The Mershon Company of New York, and it did indeed look old. Intrigued by its vintage look and feel, Yvonne started Googling to see if I had lucked up on a rare copy. I was indifferent: I had picked up enough old books to know that it was not likely. But one can always hope.
“Alice in Wonderland” grew out of a story told by the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson to three little girls as he and a friend rowed with them up the Thames River near Oxford, England, in 1862 (the book starts with a poem about that trip; Dodgson was also a poet). One of the girls loved the story so much that she asked him to write it down.
And so he did. Took him two years, though, and he called it “Alice’s Adventures Underground,” with his own illustrations. He published the actual book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in 1865 under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, with woodcut illustrations by political cartoonistJohn Tenniel. The original wood blocks are at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.
The book was immensely popular and continues to be today. It has been translated into many languages, published in hundreds of editions, made into movies, sold as merchandise and collectibles, and spawned the author his own support network, the Lewis Carroll Society of North America.
The first Alice film, a British silent movie, was made in 1903. Walt Disney made a movie in 1951 (he found the book hard to translate into a film, he said, because Alice had no “heart”). Director Tim Burton remade it this year for Disney with Johnny Depp and a 19-year-old Alice – a movie I thoroughly enjoyed, especially Burton’s quirky take on it.
What struck Yvonne in her search was an 1865 version of the book. Could this be Sherry’s book, she wondered. She kept digging. It seemed that Tenniel objected to the print quality of the first 2,000 copies of the 1865 book by publishers MacMillan & Co. and had them pulled. Another edition was published in December with an 1866 date. Dodgson sold the original editions to Appleton publishers of New York, saying, according to one website, the print quality was good enough for “backwoods Americans.” Those books carried the Appleton imprint and an 1866 date.
My book had no publication date and it certainly was not published by Appleton. Yvonne and I both had a hard time finding out anything about it. I finally found an Alice book published by Mershon in 1927, which was likely the date of my copy.
It was a good mystery, though. As I combed the web, I found several people inquiring on forums about their own Alice books: when they were published and how much they were worth.
PBA Galleries, an auction house in San Francisco, is auctioning an 1866 First American Edition of the book on June 15. It is expected to go for $3,000 to $5,000. The description states that it is one of only about 20 copies still around, with most of them in collections owned by institutions.
First editions of the 1865 and 1866 books were being offered by various booksellers on AbeBooks.com for $9,500 to $156,000.
My other Alice book turned up in a box lot a week ago. It, too, had no publication date, and was published by Hurst & Co. of New York. It is in much better condition and appears to be a later edition, but I could not find out anything about it.
My Alice books cost me pennies because they were among items for which I paid no more than 5 bucks. If Alice keeps showing up, maybe I’ll get lucky.
Thats crazy, I’m doing the same
I can’t find anything. But my book has an inscription dated 1919. Published by mershon. Maroon hard cover. But the front of the book has a ⛵️ boat. ??