Through The Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There

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Rare first printing survivor? of the Suppressed 'Sixtieth Thousand' [3rd ed] issue. In the original decorative red cloth, a few marks, gilt edge tooling & characters. Spine lightly sunned, gilt titles & tooling, edges bumped. Internally, black endpapers, tissue guarded frontispiece & illustrations by John Tenniel, [11], [1], [1], 2-224 pp, [4] adverts, 50 illustrations, a.e.g., one gathering working loose & a little proud, ink ownership inscription to half-title (Feb 1894), slightly cocked, ep cracked. Housed in a superb custom drop-back box by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, in crimson goatskin, suede lined, gilt tooling & characters. 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. 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 later changed his mind about destroying the remaining copies of this edition, and instead favoured rebinding it and distributing it to charitable institutions, which had been done with the first suppressed Alice. This copy, being free of any institutional stamps is very likely one of the initial 60. Only 60 copies of the 60th thousand had gone out when Carroll intervened (diary entry for 21 November 1893; Diary 9 (2005), p.105). He asked Macmillan to destroy the remainder of the edition, but the situation quickly escalated. Having lost faith in both Macmillan and his printer, Carroll stopped the working-off of Sylvie and Bruno Concluded and soon demanded, in a letter to Macmillan, that 'no more Wonderlands are to be printed, from the present electrotypes, till I give permission' (24 November 1893) -- with serious financial consequences for both as potential December sales of Carroll's new book were missed. Carroll's recall left Through the Looking-Glass out of print until 1897. He later changed his mind about destroying the edition and instead favoured rebinding it and distributing it to charitable institutions, as had been done with the suppressed first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. ONE OF ONLY 4 COPIES KNOWN IN THE ORIGINAL CLOTH: 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 Mechanics' Institute were known, but it is only in the last few years that Selwyn Goodacre has been able to trace 4 copies in the original cloth, one of these now lost (Selwyn Goodacre, unpublished census). (185*127). (Crotch 84b; Selwyn H. Goodacre 'Lewis Carrolls Rejection of the 60th Thousand of Through the Looking Glass'; The Book Collector Summer 1975 p251-56). Lovett 15a)