An Easter greeting to every child who loves “Alice” (first edition, first issue)

A$500 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Oxford : the author, 1876. Folded sheet printed on Towgood watermarked paper (135 x 90 mm), pp. [4], pale foxing, with (fittingly) juvenile arithmetic in pencil to the lower panel. First printing, with the word My in Roman type face, instead of italics, at line twelve of the third page (altered in the second printing). A rare leaflet privately printed by Lewis Carroll in Oxford which takes the form of a letter addressed to Dear Child , the opening text stating Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter, from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can seem to yourself to hear wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a happy Easter . This first edition first printing is on paper bearing a partial E Towgood Fine watermark and features the word My in Roman type face, instead of italics, at line twelve of the third page. This rare piece of Carolliana was described (somewhat over-enthusiastically) by Williams Madan as the rarest of the Carroll items excepting the first issue of Alice . It was originally printed with the intention of having them inserted into specially bound presentation copies of The Hunting of the Snark, however Dodgson is also known to have given away individual copies to his young friends, as evidently this example was, it bearing arithmetical equations in a young hand on the final blank page.

• Binding: Hardcover

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