Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. [Fore-edge Painting]. by Carroll, Lewis - 1891

London: Macmillan and Co, 1891. Finely bound example of this timeless children's classic. Octavo, bound in full red morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine, gilt ruling to the panels, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, illustrated by John Tenniel, tissue-guarded frontispiece. With a fore-edge painting depicting a portrait of the author and two scenes from the book. In fine condition with the original cloth covers adhered to the versos of the front and rear panels. Alice's Adventures were "born on a golden afternoon" in July 1862, when the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) took the three small daughters of Dean Liddell of Christ Church on a boating trip up the Isis. Carroll delighted the three children by relating Alice's adventures, and eventually promised his favorite among the three, Alice Liddell, to write the story down for her. Through the Looking-Glass can be seen as a mirror image of the Alice's Adventures. For example, the latter begins outdoors in the warmth of May 4 and uses the imagery of playing cards, while the former begins indoors on a snowy, cold November 4 and uses the imagery of chess. "The two Alice books completed the reinstatement of the imagination, so long disapproved of by the opponents of fairy stories, to its proper place. 'Alice is, in a word, a book of that extremely rare kind which will belong to all the generations to come until the language becomes obsolete'" (Carpenter & Prichard, 102).