Welcome to the world of Childhood Treasures.....
Alice in Wonderland
We hope to use this website to help promote our love and interest for collecting Games & toys and other collectible childhood treasures, around the world. We intend to build and make it available as a reference site for other researchers, dealers and collectors seeking accurate information on their collection.
On the 4th July in 1862 the Rev. Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) set out for an idyllic trip on the River Thames to Godstow in Oxfordshire. With him on the trip were Rev. Robinson Duckworth and the three young Liddell sisters (Lorina, Alice and Edith), the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church.
To amuse the girls during the trip Dodgson made up a fantastical story about a girl called Alice. Alice Liddell was so taken with the story that on returning to Oxford, she asked Dodgson to write it down. Over the next couple of days he outlined the story which was to become Alice's Adventures Underground. He started the manuscript on 13 November 1862, finishing it on 10 February 1863, three months later.
The manuscript was shown to some of his friends, which include the novelist Henry Kingsley and the children's book writer George MacDonald, who was the author of the famous “Princess and the Goblin”. MacDonald showed the story to his family and after seeing how much they enjoyed it, he urged Dodgson to have it published.
Dodgson kept the manuscript as his source material and enlarged it into what was to become Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In November 1864 he gave his original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Underground to Alice Liddell as a present. He seems to have left small spaces in this manuscript which he had illustrated himself.
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party (from Alice in Wonderland)
Central Park, New York
In 1864, John Tenniel the well known book artist was commissioned to illustrate Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which went on to be published by Macmillan & Co. in an edition of two thousand, printed by Oxford University Press in July 1865. Only fifty copies had been produced and bound in red cloth, when Tenniel declared he was discontented with the printed drawings.
So the book was withdrawn and recalled. Those copies of the book they received back were given to children’s hospitals rather than destroy them. Only twenty three of these copies are known to have survived.
They decided to use a new printer and chose Richard Clay of Bungay, so in November 1865 a new edition of four thousand was printed. Dodgson said this edition was a “perfect piece of artistic printing”. Half the copies had light blue endpapers and the other two thousand had green.
In April 1866 the remainder of the Bungay edition were sold to the American publisher, D. Appleton & Co. The copies were bound, the page edges gilded and the title page cancelled with an Appleton imprint added, all this was done in the UK before shipping. The copies of this first American edition have come to be known as ‘the Appleton Alice’.
< < < Previous |
Next > > > |