Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Signed by Alice Hargreaves

Binding Details:  Beautifully bound in a signed full morocco leather binding by Bayntun-Riviere with five raised bands to the spine, boards ruled in gilt with the front cover tooled with Alice holding the pig and the rear cover with the Cheshire Cat, elaborate spine panel gold gilt decorations, gilt turn-ins and edges, marbled endpapers, gilt dentilles, and gold gilted page edges. The book is housed in a custom made cloth clamshell box with a leather spine label which has gold gilted titling.

The Bayntun-Riviere binder’s stamp appears in gold gilt on the bottom of the front inside cover.

Book Details:  Known as the “Centennial Edition”, this is the only edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” signed by the “Original Alice”, Alice Liddell Hargreaves for whom Lewis Carroll wrote his most famous work. The book is beautifully produced and features the original 43 illustrations by John Tenniel. According to The Dictionary of National Biography, Alice was the daughter of Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church, Oxford, where Charles Dodgson was a lecturer in mathematics. Dodgson, whose hobby was photography, frequently photographed Alice and her sisters and became a close family friend, playing games with, and making up stories for, the children. It was on a picnic on 4 July 1862 that he invented the story of Alice in Wonderland. The real Alice was then aged ten and pleaded with him to write Alice's adventures down for her, which he carefully did, supplying his own illustrations, in a green notebook that has become one of the most cherished literary manuscripts in the British Library.

Alice Liddell Hargreaves did not sign all of the copies of this edition. Subscribers to the Limited Edition club were asked to pay a surcharge to get an autographed copy. Estimates are that she signed about 1,200 copies of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This copy is number 1062 of 1500 and is signed by Alice Hargreaves on a blank sheet bound into the book and by the typographer and binding designer Frederic Warde on the colophon.

Condition Report:  The binding and clamshell box are in MINT condition with no flaws. Internally, the book is very clean with no signs of previous ownership. Overall, this is a beautiful signed binding by Bayntun-Riviere that houses the only edition of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece signed by Alice Hargreaves.

Photographs of the binding, endpapers, clamshell box, signatures, and some stock illustrations from the book appear in the photo section of the listing.