Lot 22
  • 22

Carroll, Lewis [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]

Estimate
8,000 - 10,000 GBP
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Description

  • Carroll, Lewis [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]
  • Set of Alice books. London: Macmillan and Co., 1887-1891, comprising:
  • Paper
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 1891, eighth edition, "eighty-fourth thousand" (with an entirely reset "Mouse's Tail" and a "faceless" Alice on p.91);

Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice found there. 1887, third edition, "fifty ninth thousand";



2 volumes, 8vo (183 x 122mm.), PRESENTATION COPIES, EACH INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ("Edith Miller | from the Author | Oct 3 | 1893") on the half-title, illustrations by John Tenniel, original red cloth with gilt vignettes on upper and lower boards, ruled in gilt, gilt edges, red collector's box, spines very lightly faded (2)

Provenance

Edith Mary Miller, presentation inscription; Nicholas Falletta, his sale, Christie's South Kensington, 30 November 2005, lots 10 and 23

Literature

Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch, 46f and 84b

Catalogue Note

A MATCHING SET OF ALICE BOOKS, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR.

Carroll met Edith Mary Miller (1870-1929) when she was just 11. The daughter of a stockbroker, Henry Miller, her family had moved to Eastbourne in 1873 after his untimely death. In 1881, Carroll was spending his fifth summer at the coast when, on the morning of August 6th, "I went along the beach to the rocks, and made friends with an attractive little girl who gave me her name as "Marion Richards"... My acquaintance with Marion involved four others, who were playing with her - May and Edith Miller, and Millicent and Mabel Pidcock" (Lewis Carroll's Diaries, ed. Edward Wakeling, 2003, vol. 7, pp.354-355).

Edith and her sister came to be counted among Carroll's group of "child-friends", often spending time together when he was visiting Eastbourne, and continuing to correspond until the author's death.

In September 1893, Carroll gave a reading to the small class of children which the Miller sisters - now in their early twenties - taught. A few days later, on October 3rd, Carroll records in his diary how he "walked to Upperton, to take the Millers the books I had promised for the school library at Ocklynge" (ibid., vol. 9, p.97). It is most probable that this inscribed matching pair of early editions were delivered at the same time, and perhaps are the very copies Carroll refers to.