DALÍ, Salvador (illus.); CARROLL, Lewis.

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. First Dalí edition, number 608 of 2,500 copies signed by Dalí on the title page, recasting Carroll's children's classic into adult surrealist vision."The artist Salvador Dalí, famous for his surreal images of melting clocks and barren landscapes, at first glance might not seem to have much in common with a retiring Victorian English don who wrote children's books. But actually, Dalí and Carroll had much in common: both men were ardent explorers of dreams and the imagination, attempting in their art to show the fertile pathways to the unconscious. This artistic temperament might explain why, in his sixties, Dalí created twelve surreal illustrations - one for each chapter - for Alice in Wonderland. Because he required a rich, lush palette for his painted drawings, Dalí turned to the oldest process for reproducing photographic images for printing: heliogravure. Similar to engraving, the method is time consuming and costly. Each heliogravure is printed by hand and considered an original" (Nichols, p. 28).A further 200 copies were issued signed and with extra plates. This copy has a duplicate limitation leaf, numbered 608, inserted; presumably a collation error by the publisher; the book is otherwise complete.

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