Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

CARROLL, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London: The Folio Society, 2016. 

Limited, Numbered and Signed (by the Artist) Edition. With illustrations by the wonderfully-talented Charles van Sandwyk. 

332 × 250 × 34 mm. Pp. [i–iv], [1–4] 5–160 [161–168]. Set in Founders Caslon types, with hand-drawn initials and circa 50 line-drawings; printed in warm black and gold inks on Ambassador Cream twin-wire laid paper. Printed in black and gold by Smith Settle, and bound in quarter vellum with vellum tips. The paper sides are blocked in gold, silver, metallic red and black foils with a confection of images from the book, centred on the dapper White Rabbit sporting a spangled red waistcoat beneath his gold topcoat. The spine spine is blocked in 24-carat gold. Gilded top edge. 

The endpapers are printed letterpress in dark red ink on Hahnemühle Bugra Butten laid paper with an array of freshly imagined images of the most famous scenes – the artist’s invention seems limitless.

The title page is a grand affair in the best golden-age tradition, featuring the supercilious Caterpillar, smoking his hookah.

The text is printed in warm black ink, chosen to harmonise both with the gold decorations and with the cream-laid paper on which they are printed; and each chapter opens with an elaborate dropped initial, all different, all intertwined with motifs from the chapter in question – the Rabbit’s watch and tiny kid-gloves; the Queen’s roses; a tureen of mock turtle soup – all highlighted with gold. Alice is famous for its typographic jokes (the mouse’s tail is a source of fun for designers of every edition), and in this edition there are plenty more.

A limitation spread containing a copperplate etching printed by New Leaf Editions and signed by van Sandwyk in December 2015 is included at the front. Eleven plates printed by Napier Jones in full colour with gold borders on Art paper, tipped into the text within ornamental gold borders. Leaf following end of text reads in part ‘limited to 1000 copies, signed and numbered by the artist on the etching, and thirty copies numbered in roman numerals, which are hors commerce’.

Also featured in this edition are a series of nine ‘scraps’ in full colour printed by Napier Jones on Art paper, individually cut out and tipped in place. Lovingly created by the artist, these hark back to the Victorian pastime of collecting small cut-out pictures into albums or ‘scrapbooks’.

Clamshell box bound in Paradise cloth, lined with Hahnemühle Bugra Butten, and spine titling label blocked in two colours on laid paper

In creating this edition, the acclaimed artist said: ‘If I think back to what Alice meant to me as a child, it was both the story and the wonderful drawings by Tenniel which inspired me to draw – and recreate – the characters for myself. Little did I know that one day my White Rabbits and Frogs in Wigs would grace the pages of such a splendid edition.’

Condition

A near-fine copy, with the vellum attractively speckled a little more than is typical for this edition. The binding remains square and firm, and the pages are clean and uninscribed. There are a couple of very faint, shallow creases to the spine, most likely from the manufacturing process, along with the tiniest dot-sized smudge at the foot of the front cover. Housed in the original clamshell case, which shows only the lightest hint of shelf wear and a very small bump to the rear corner; otherwise fine.

An absolutely gorgeous example from the Folio Society’s series of half-vellum limited edition bindings, which includes titles such as The Wind in the Willows, Gulliver’s Travels, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Just So Stories.