The Nursery Alice

[12], 56pp, [8], original quarter cloth and decorated boards, the upper cover with a pictorial design in colour of Alice asleep and dreaming beneath a tree, signed 'E.G. Thomson', the lower cover with a picture of the March Hare in the centre, and the initials 'E.G.T.'.

Cloth to spine repaired, with small splits to head of upper joint, corners bumped with small amounts of loss, slightly rubbed with very light soiling. Internally very lightly browned, lacking tissue guard to frontispiece, but generally clean and fairly bright.

Now housed in a black buckram chemise and slipcase, with title and author in gilt to spine.

Inscribed by Carroll, in his usual purple ink to half title, being one of one hundred presentation copies (see Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch, page 162), 'For Nina from the author, Mar. 25 1890'. Nina was apparently Nina 'Ninty' Eschwege, who later married Herbert Haviland Field.

This 'second (first published) edition appears to differ from the first only in the date 1890, in the substitution of 'Price Four Shillings' above the imprint, and in the Advertisements at the end. Copies also have an inserted printed slip advertising Sylvie and Bruno [not found in this copy]. The impression consisted of 10,000 copies on white, rather than 'toned' paper, with greatly improved colour reproduction' (Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch, page 162), after Dodgson had rejected the first ten thousand sets of sheets printed by Edmund Evans, because the pictures were too bright and gaudy, so he instructed that they be reprinted.

Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch 216