

This edition has the original integrity which any collector really values’ ‘Seeing an 1865 Alice is a very special thing.

On their return, Alice asked him to write down the story. During the afternoon he related the first parts of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the precursor to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The story of the 1865 edition begins on 4 July 1862 when Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll), along with a friend The Rev Robinson Duckworth, took the three daughters of Dean Liddell of Christ Church, Oxford - Lorina, Alice and Edith - on a boat trip on the Thames. ‘It was given to a little girl by her father, who had a position at Oxford, and it stayed with her for her entire life.’ ‘This copy (estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000) is interesting because we can trace its history back to the Oxford days,’ he notes. It will be offered in a stand-alone sale taking place at 12pm on 16 June, immediately following the Books & Manuscripts auction at Christie’s New York.Ī lecturer in mathematics at Oxford, Carroll’s real passion was for storytelling, says Wahlgren. ‘This is a true first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ,’ says Francis Wahlgren, Christie’s International Director of Science & Books, of an original 1865 edition of the Lewis Carroll fantasy that went on to become one of the most famous works in children’s literature. ‘Extremely rare’: A first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandīooks specialist Francis Wahlgren on a remarkable true first edition published in 1865 - one of only 23 surviving copies
