Through The Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There

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The Suppressed 'Sixtieth Thousand' issue, presentation copy from the author to the Mechanics Institute with presentation ink-stamp to title. In the original pictorial red cloth, gilt edge tooling. Spine lightly sunned, gilt titles & tooling, edges bumped. Internally, half title, frontis, [11], [1], [1], 2-224 pp, [4] adverts, 50 illustrations, a.e.g., black endpapers, very slight pulling to one gathering, slightly cocked. Housed in a custom half red morocco gilt over red cloth drop-back-box, gilt titles to spine, gilt tooling & titles to morocco label to upper board. A Very Good example. (185*124 mm). Scarce. Only 4 copies known to exist in the original red cloth. Up until as recently as 1990 Lovett noted that 'no copies of the 60th thousand in standard binding have been recorded' (p.21). Copies rebound for the Mechanic's Institute were known, but it is only in the last few years that Selwyn Goodacre has managed to trace 4 copies in the original cloth, one of these now lost (Selwyn Goodacre, unpublished census). This suppressed issue was, according to Carroll, riddled with printing production faults. The illustrations were over-printed, the pages badly folded and it led to him threatening to terminate his contract with Macmillan. This had already been an issue for the first edition of the 1865 Alice, which was recalled after Tenniel complained about the quality of the printing. On receiving the first 6 copies of this issue, Carroll wrote a letter to Frederick Macmillan, stating that: "the book is worthless ... much as I should regret the having to sever a connection now lasted nearly 30 years, I shall feel myself absolutely compelled to do so, unless I can have some assurance that better care shall be taken, in future, to ensure that my books shall be of the best artistic quality attainable for the money" (Letters p.995). Only 60 copies had gone out when Carroll intervened. He asked Macmillan to destroy the remainder of the edition, which led to 'Through the Looking Glass' being out of print until 1897. He did later change his mind about destroying the remaining copies of this edition, and instead favored rebinding it and distributing it to charitable institutions, as had been done with the first suppressed Alice. (Williams, MacLean, Green & Crotch 84b; Selwyn H. Goodacre "Lewis Carrolls Rejection of the 60th Thousand of Through the Looking Glass"; The Book Collector Summer 1975 p251-56).