Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. [And:] Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

London: Macmillan and Co, 1894. Alice in Full Dress: Tenniel's Wonderland in a Sangorski & Sutcliffe Binding

CARROLL, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. With forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel. Thirty-eighth thousand. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1897.

[Bound together with:]

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. With fifty illustrations by John Tenniel. Twenty-fourth thousand. London: Macmillan & Co., Limited, 1897.

Peoples Edition. Finely Bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.

Two works bound in one volume. Octavo (7 x 4 5/8 inches; 178 x 117 mm.). Alice: xii, 174 pp.; Looking-Glass: xii, 208, [4, advertisements] pp.

Finely bound ca. 1960 by Sangorski & Sutcliffe in full red morocco. Covers decoratively bordered in gilt, upper cover with a central gilt medallion of Alice, lower cover with a matching medallion of the Queen of Hearts. Spine with five raised bands, compartments richly tooled and lettered in gilt, gilt board edges and turn-ins, light blue and gold patterned endpapers, all edges gilt. Spine lightly faded, otherwise a fine copy.

The "Peoples Edition" represents Macmillan's effort to keep Carroll's works widely accessible in durable, affordable form - yet, as here, such copies were frequently elevated by later private bindings into highly collectible objects.

The "thousand" printings (Thirty-eighth thousand; Twenty-fourth thousand) reflect the extraordinary and continuous demand for Carroll's works in the late 19th century.

John Tenniel's illustrations remain definitive - so closely tied to the text that they effectively fixed the visual identity of Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts for all subsequent generations.

The binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe - arguably the pre-eminent decorative bindery of 20th-century London - adds considerable appeal. Even in a restrained design such as this, their hallmark precision in forwarding and gilt tooling is evident. The use of thematic gilt medallions (Alice / Queen of Hearts) gives the volume a pleasing narrative symmetry rarely found in standard trade bindings.