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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1908 Illustrations by Harry Rountree flat

The reason that I decided to use this particular book for my project was because I have always loved the story of Alice and I find it fascinating that so many artists have illustrated editions of this book. It has inspired movies, poems, and other books. Many notable artists including Salvador Dali have illustrated editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Some of those versions are now rare collectibles and others are quite common and inexpensive. Salvador Dali John Tenniel

=Author= Lewis Carroll Jan. 27th, 1832 - Jan. 14th, 1898

Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson but he preferred the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. Carroll became known for being an important British author, mathematician, photographer, deacon, and logician. He was born in Cheshire, England. He was the third child and the oldest son, as his parents had another eight children after he was born. He was basically home-schooled by his mother until he reached the age of 12. His best-known works are //Alice in Wonderland//, //Alice Through the Looking-Glass//, and among many poems, //The Jabberwocky.// Carroll is also well known for his photography, something that he considered doing professionally before dedicating his life to writing. Lewis Carroll had a very unique style of writing, he used capital letters, parenthesis, and italics in seemingly strange for emphasis. These peculiarities gave his stories and poems a whimsical and almost childish air that fit his fantasy-filled tales perfectly. This photograph is of Alice Liddell, Carroll's neighbor. Many people mistakenly believe that the story was written about, for, or inspired by her but it actually wasn't. Carroll sometimes liked to include the names of children he knew into his work but he said none of the rumors about Liddell were true.

= PUBLISHER INFORMATION =

This book was published by the **Thomas Nelson and Sons** publishing house in 1908 in Edinburgh Scotland. It was founded in 1978 by its namesake and at first it served as a bookshop for second-hand religious books. Not long after its inception he began publishing religious texts, but soon after that started publishing a mixture of secular and religious texts, moving towards more non-religious texts. Interestingly, Thomas Nelson and Sons was the first publisher for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator Sherlock Holmes). The company was eventually bought by Stanley Thornes in 2001 and he merged the two names and called it **Nelson Thornes**. The firm developed branches in London, Dublin, and New York at one point. The New York branch became quite renowned. Thomas Nelson, the original publishing house is now based in Nashville Tennessee and once again specializes in publishing leading Christian authors. Logo & Original Building

This version of //Alice’s// is an extremely rare edition that has never been published in the United States. The version that Goucher has is a first edition of the particular version illustrated by Harry Rountree. While I was doing research I found that it is the hardest-to-find and most sough-after post 1900 edition of the //Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.//

= PROVENANCE AND EVIDENCE OF PAST OWNERS & READERS =

The only provenance that the book had was a tiny book plate on the inside of the front cover. It is from B.H. Blackwell LTD Booksellers and it has the address. B.H. Blackwell Booksellers is a bookselling company that was started by Benjamin Henry on New Year’s Day. His father had been part of the Temperance Society, a society that was dedicated to self-education and promoted the reading of religious texts. Blackwell finished his formal education at the age of thirteen and was immediately apprenticed to a local bookseller named Charles Richards. As far as evidence of past readers the book is practically pristine. It is in amazing condition for a book from the early 1900’s. There are a few letters that are smudged but that is most likely from the pages being closed too quickly after printing. The binding of the book has a full color illustration on the cover and on the spine it is decorated with a gold drawing of Alice standing among some trees. The spine is the most worn out part of the book, it appears to be made of cloth-covered cardboard. = PARATEXTS AND GUIDES FOR NAVIGATING THE TEXT =

Between the first page and the table of contents there is a page that has a poem printed on it. The poem is by Lewis Carroll and it is called //All in the Golden Afternoon//. The poem is an introduction to the story because it tells the reader of how the “tale of Wonderland” came to be and it also mentions Alice for the first time. The poem is continued on the back of that page because it is a fairly long poem. The book has a fairly simple table of contents. It has delicate flower decorations around the word content.

Chapter titles Except for chapter one which has the title of the book written in large, fancy letters and another flower decoration the chapter titles are not ornate. They are writing in italics and the chapter number is always in roman numerals. The book also has simple page numbers that are centered at the bottom of every page.

On page 56 Alice is talking to the mouse and to illustrate the length of the mouse’s tale Carroll made the words trail down the page just like the mouse’s tail.



= ILLUSTRATIONS =

This book has 92 stunning, full-color illustrations. They are all original watercolor paintings and some of them are outlined with traces of black ink. The entire book is printed on heavyweight gloss paper that brings out the bright colors of the watercolors. What I love about these illustrations is that they are extremely delicate and intensely colored at the same time. The characters have tiny little features that have a surprising amount of detail. There are [find number] of full-page illustrations, quite a lot of half-page illustrations and some small ones that are scattered throughout the text to highlight certain parts. Below every illustration there is a short line of text that describes exactly what part of the story is being illustrated. For example, the page with the painting of the mouse says, “The Mouse gave a sudden leap” because it is referencing the part in the story when Alice is talking to the mouse about cats and the frightened mouse jumps out of the puddle of Alice’s tears that they are swimming in. My personal favorite illustration is on the frontispiece. This page is one of the most ornate that the book has because it has the title of the book, the author, the illustrator’s name, along with how many illustrations the book has, and the name of the publisher. This page is an excellent example of hierarchy of text because it has different sized fonts, red and black lettering, italics, and bold letters. It also has a decorative flowery element. The illustration on this page is of Alice right after she has started growing. What I like about it is that from the knees up Alice is completely proportionate but she has extremely long, thin legs that she is looking down at. Her ankle length dress has turned into a mini dress with awkward little sleeves. It’s whimsical but a little twisted-just like the story.

"Ugh!" Said the Lory. "Good-bye, feet!" "Mine is a long and a sad tale." "The Mouse gave a sudden leap." " It vanished quite slowly."

= THE PAPER = This edition is printed on fairly heavyweight, glossy paper. In the early 1900’s this paper was made in China. It was made by coating the paper with a white clay called kaolin which fills in all of the spaces and when buffed and varnished becomes shiny. It is good quality paper that has held up remarkably well. = HARRY ROUNTREE = 1878-1950 Originally from New Zealand he moved to England and became an illustrator when he was 23. He found work illustrating magazines and then books. Later on he started writing and illustrating his own books.