Symbolic logic. Part I: elementary

London & New York: Macmillan and Co., 1896. THIRD EDITION. Addendum slip tipped in before the start of the text. Original publisher’s cloth with the author and title in black on the front cover. Second edition of Carroll’s early work of logic with the introduction dated January 1896. The first three editions were all published in 1896; the fourth (and final) edition was printed the following year. Intended to supply “for a most interesting mental recreation,” this work anticipates his later Game of logic (1897), and introduces his inventive use of square Venn diagrams to represent original syllogisms. The first section “is a serious attempt to popularize formal logic and accuracy of thought . . . there are plenty of quaint examples, answers and solutions” (Williams, Madan, Green). The appendix is addressed to teachers, and offers a preview of the second and third parts, which were never completed.

The preface to this third edition is dated 20 July 1896 and incorporates the new matter of the second edition “but makes little or no further change in pagination or otherwise. It adds one clause to the advertisement ...”

Dodgson (1832-98), who was appointed lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College from 1855 to 1881, strictly published what he considered recreational works in logic and literature under his pseudonym.

DNB, XXII, p. 567-69; Watson, New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, III, pp. 977-79; Williams, Madan, Green, 270.