Carroll, Lewis (2016) ‘Alice in Wonderland’, Folio Society illustrated limited edition with original signed Carroll letter

Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (2016) ‘Alice in Wonderland‘, UK limited edition, published by The Folio Society. Signed and numbered by illustrator Charles van Sandwyk. Limited to just 1,000 copies of which this is no. 968. Together with an original letter signed by the author Lewis Carroll. The letter: Autograph letter signed, ‘C.L. Dodgson’, Christ Church, Oxford, 21 June, 1886, to Mrs Dyer, in blue ink, in full: ‘Please consider the rooms as engaged from June 3rd. I shall probably arrive at afternoon. If you ever happen to have the half-way room vacant, the little friend, who used to come in last year, (Miss Louise Keane), would be allowed to come as my guest for a week’. One page written vertically on the recto of an octavo leaf. Fine condition bar two creases to fit an envelope and reverse corners show signs of being previously tipped in. Provenance of the letter: Blake Alexander Hankey (1828-1889) was a JP for Sussex and a partner of Thomson Hankey & Co., West India merchants. Duff Cooper (1st Viscount Norwich, 1890-1954), British Conservative politician, diplomat and military and political historian. Starting in the late 1870s Dodgson stayed at the guest house of Mr and Mrs Dyer at 7 Lushington Road, Eastbourne, between July and October each year. His Eastbourne child friend Louise Keane who he taught arithmetic, logic and French is mentioned in the Diaries, Dodgson seeming to have known her between 1885 and 1888. Condition of the book: fine with only minuscule signs of ownership. An amazing production and perhaps the most beautiful edition of Alice ever published. Quarter vellum binding with vellum tips and decorative paper covered boards in a deep shade of red; 24-carat gold gilt lettering stamped to the spine and illustrations on the front board blocked in four foils. Gilded top edge. Illustrated endpapers. Limitation spread blocked in two colours on two shades of laid paper, inset with an etching hand-printed under the artist’s supervision on Somerset Velvet Buff hand-made paper; signed and numbered by Van Sandwyk, out of an edition of 1000. Eleven plates printed in full colour with gold borders on art paper, tipped into the text within ornamental gold borders just like in the good old days of the ‘Golden Age of Illustration’ reminiscent of Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen. This Folio Society edition of Alice in Wonderland won the Book of the Year Award in 2016.