Octavo. Publisher’s presentation binding in blue morocco, titles and decorations to spine and boards gilt, inner dentelles gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Housed in custom quarter blue morocco and cloth solander box. With 37 illustrations by the author. With the Duchess of Albany’s bookplate on the front pastedown. Extremities a little rubbed, some very minor wear to tips, small split to head of front hinge; an excellent copy. First edition.
Presentation copy, inscribed by the author in his customary purple ink on the half-title, “Presented to H.R.H. The Duchess of Albany, by the author, in grateful recollection of three happy days, and of two sweet children, Aug. 6, 1889.” The duchess replied on 17 August, acknowledging the gift: “It gives me much pleasure as I am a great friend of Alice and her adventures. I must now also thank you for your letter to me and the two charming books with which you made my children very happy. I think they will well remember the kind gentleman who spent so much time with them in amusing them and telling them stories.”
Dodgson knew her late husband, Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria’s fourth son, who matriculated at Oxford on 27 November 1872; he had his portrait taken at Dodgson’s Tom Quad studio at Christ Church in 1875 and signed his name in Dodgson’s album. For a brief period during his studies the prince was romantically linked with Alice Liddell, and, though nothing came of the romance, the two remained cordial. In 1883 Alice (by then Mrs Hargreaves) wrote to congratulate the prince on the birth of his first child, Alice, at the same time inviting him to be godfather to her second son, Leopold Reginald, also born that year.
The following year the prince died of a brain haemorrhage, but it was not until June 1889 that Dodgson became acquainted with his widow, while staying Hatfield House as a guest of Lord Salisbury. The Duchess was accompanied by her two children, Alice, and Charles, Duke of Albany aged 6 and 5 respectively. Dodgson – perhaps influenced by the coincidence of the little girl’s name – made gifts of several of his works, including the present example. Dodgson struck up a friendship with the children, and regularly sent them gifts of puzzles or presentation copies of his books. Princess Alice recalled their early friendship in her autobiography: “Doctor Dodgson or ‘Lewis Carroll’ was especially kind to Charlie and me, though when I was five I offended him once, when, at a children’s party at Hatfield, he was telling story. He was a stammerer and being unable to follow what he was saying I suddenly asked in a loud voice, ‘Why does he waggle his mouth like that?’ I was hastily removed by the lady-in-waiting. Afterwards he wrote that he ‘liked Charlie but thought Alice would turn out badly.’ He soon forgot all this and gave us books for Christmas with anagrams of our names on the fly-leaf.”
This is one of a very few known copies in this unrecorded presentation binding. By a letter to Macmillan of 17 December 1886, Dodgson is known to have requested three special copies, one in white vellum (the ultimate copy, for Alice Liddell) and two in morocco (one for Alice’s mother, the other untraceable), which were ready in time to be inscribed on Christmas Day.
