DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge (“Lewis Carroll”) (1832-1898). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1886.
8vo (184 x 127 mm). Half-title, with 42 illustrations by John Tenniel. (Small stain to upper margin of p. 71). Original gilt decorated red cloth, edges gilt, black coated endpapers (some spotting to covers, spine somewhere darkened and rolled, light rubbing at corners and ends, rear joint tender at publisher’s ads).
SEVENTH EDITION, WITH AN “IMPORTANT ALTERATION” TO THE TEXT, A SIGNIFICANT PRESENTATION COPY SINSCRIBED BY CARROLL ON A SLIP TO MAGGIE SAVILE CLARKE (1870-1894), dated in the year of publication, mounted on the half-title. Clarke was the daughter of the playwright, Henry Savile Clarke (1841-1893) who wrote the lyrics and book that same year for the first professional dramatization of Alice’s Adventures and Through the Looking-Glass that remained popular for half a century. In one of Carroll’s diary entries, dated 20th December 1886, the author writes of his first glimpse of Clarke’s play at the Prince of Wales Theatre: “The first act (Wonderland) goes well, specially the Mad Tea Party. Mr. Sydney Harcourt is a capital Hatter, and little Dorothy d'Alcourt (aet. 6|) a delicious Dormouse. Phoebe Carlo is a splendid Alice. Her song and dance with the Cheshire Cat (Master C. Adeson, who played the Pirate King in ‘Pirates of Penzance’) was a gem. As a whole the play seems a success”. Carroll would correspond with the Clarke family for several years, particularly Maggie and her sister Kitty (see letters CXXXIV and CXXXV in “A Selection from the Letters of Lewis Carroll to His Child-friends”).
The seventh edition of Alice contains an “important alteration” which Carroll describes in a special Preface that runs: “As Alice is about to appear on the stage, and as the lines beginning ‘’Tis the voice of the Lobster’ were found to be too fragmentary for dramatic purposes, four lines have been added to the first stanza, and six to the second, while the Oyster has been developed into a Panther”. Williams-Madan-Green-Crutch 46e.