About "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", the book - Alice-in-Wonderland.net

On November 26, 1865 "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll was published in America. From the article:

"Adventures in Wonderland", the book - Alice-in-Wonderland.net
About the book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
How the story began
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (the real name of Lewis Carroll, the author) often told stories to his child-friends, amongst which Alice and her sisters. Sometimes these stories, which he made up on the spot, were told when they were visiting him in his rooms, sometimes on other occasions, like river picknicks.

The first version of the story of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” arose at 4 July 1862. Charles Dodgson, his friend reverend Canon Duckworth, and the sisters Alice, Lorina and Edith Liddell were on one of their boat trips on the river Isis (the local name for the stretch of the Thames that flows through Oxford) from Oxford to Godstow. Alice grew restless and begged Dodgson for a story “with lots of nonsense in it”. Dodgson began, and, as usual, invented the story while he was telling it. Much of the story was based on a picnic a couple of weeks earlier when they had been caught in the rain.

Several times Dodgson tried to break off the story (‘all until next time’), but the children were not to be put off. They didn’t return at the Deanery until late in the evening.

This is how Duckworth described the trip afterwards:

“I rowed stroke and he rowed bow (the three little girls sat in the stern) … and the story was actually composed over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as ‘cox’ of our gig … I remember turning round and saying, ‘Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?’ And he replied, ‘Yes, I’m inventing it as we go along.’ “

On two other boat trips, Dodgson continued the series of ‘Alice stories’. At that point, they were more a collection of individual tales than one integral story.
Read how Dodgson described the trip and the invention of the story, in his article ‘Alice on the Stage‘.

It is not known how long exactly Dodgson took to finish his tale. More than a month later, on 6 August 1862, he records in his diary that he took the girls on another boat trip and “had to go on with my interminable fairy-tale of ‘Alice’s Adventures.'”.

In an article in the New York Times of April 4th 1928, Alice Liddell recalled:

“The begining of Alice was told to me one summer afternoon ,when the sun was so hot we landed in the meadows down the river, deserting the boat to take refuge in the only bit of shade to be found, which was under a newly made hayrick. Here from all three of us, my sisters and myself, came the old petition, ‘Tell us a story’ and Mr. Dodgson began it. Sometimes to tease us, Mr. Dodgson would stop and say suddenly, ‘That’s all till next time.’ ‘Oh,’ we would cry, ‘it’s not bedtime already!’ and he would go on. Another time the story would begin in the boat and Mr. Dodgson would pretend to fall asleep in the middle, to our great dismay.”

book
Reproduction of the manuscript “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”

Normally, after a story had been told, it vanished in air as quickly as Dodgson had invented them. However, Alice must have liked these particular stories very much, because she asked Dodgson to write the story down for her. Initially, he was hesitant, but eventually he gave in to Alice’s pleads. Dodgson stayed up late that night to jot down the main events, and sketched an initial outline of the story the day after, during a train journey.

He started the writing of the full text on 13 November 1862, and completed it on 10 February 1863 (source). Dodgson expanded the story somewhat when writing out his oral tales. In the article ‘Alice on the Stage‘ he tells us: “In writing it out, I added many fresh ideas, which seemed to grow of themselves upon the original stock”.

When the story was finished, he copied it out again, more carefully and in a hand that Alice would find legible, and left spaces for pictures of his own drawings. He called this manuscript “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground“. Before he added the drawings, he practiced first by creating several sketches. On 13 September 1864 he had finished the pictures, and thereby completed the manuscript.

Dodgson retained the manuscript version for reference as he expanded the book into “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (see below). (source) He finally presented the finished manuscript, a leather booklet, to Alice as a Christmas gift, on 26 November 1864.

Publishing the story
Dodgson’s friend and novelist Henry Kingsley saw the manuscript text and encouraged him to publish the book. Dodgson asked advice from his other friend, George MacDonald, an author of children’s books. MacDonald took the manuscript home to read it to his children, and his six-year-old son Greville declared that he “wished there were 60,000 copies of it”, so Dodgson decided to publish it, and finance the whole project himself. This happened sometime early in 1863.

Before doing so, Dodgson revised the story by cutting out the references to the previous picnic and expanded the original tale considerably; he added some chapters, altered some poems and added jokes that had occurred to him later. The first version had not included “The Caucus Race”, “Pig and Pepper” and “A Mad Tea-Party”. The Cheshire Cat had not been invented, the Ugly Duchess was called “the Marchioness of Mock Turtles”, the part of the Mock Turtle’s schooldays lacked and the greater part of the Trial scenes was written later. The Mouse Tale was different.

The story also got a new title. In a letter to a friend Dodgson explained that he feared that “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground” might appear to be a book containing ‘instruction about mines’ and therefore suggested:

“Alice among the elves / goblins” or
“Alice’s hour / doings / adventures in elf-land / wonderland”

He personally preferred “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, so this became the final title.

Dodgson liked to draw himself, and originally wanted to use his own illustrations for the published edition, but eventually admitted that his talents lay in directions other than those of a draughtsman. Around 25th January 1864 he approached Sir John Tenniel, a cartoonist for the magazine ‘Punch’, to draw the illustrations. Dodgson provided Tenniel with detailed instructions how to draw them. Read more about the illustration process.

Dodgson was very concerned about how his book would look, and discussed the options extensively with his publisher. He chose the color bright red for the cover of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. On 11 November 1864, Dodgson wrote to Macmillan:

“I have been considering the question of the colour of Alice’s Adventures, and have come to the conclusion that bright red will be the best – not the best, perhaps, artistically, but the most attractive to childish eyes. Can this colour be managed with the same smooth, bright cloth that you have in green?”

The very first edition did not have gilt edges. Dodgson wrote to Macmillan on May 24th, 1865:

“As I want it to be a table-book, I fancy it would look better with the edges evenly cut smooth, and no gilding”

first-edition-replica-of-aaiw
The original first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The book was ready on 4 July 1865, exactly 3 years after the famous boat trip. The first edition consisted of 2,000 prints, but because of Tenniel’s dissatisfaction with the printing of the pictures and because of ink bleed on the pages, all 50 (presentation) copies that had been bound by that time, were fetched back within a month. All but about 23 copies were successfully recalled and donated to children’s hospitals and the like.

In a second attempt, again 2,000 copies were produced, using a new printer (Richard Clay of Bungay, in stead of Oxford University Press) and paper of better quality. (source: ‘Census of copies of the suppressed 1865 Alice by Selwyn Goodacre’, in: ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, an 1865 printing re-described and newly identified as the Publisher’s ‘File copy’, by Justin Schiller. The Jabberwocky, 1990) This new ‘first edition’ was published on 18 November 1865 (but dated 1866) – although often the date of 26 November is mentioned. (source: C. Lovett, Knight Letter, Lewis Carroll Society of North America, nr. 95). Copies mainly have light blue end papers, or sometimes dark green end papers. (source) Its paper quality, as well as its typesetting, are obviously better than the original first edition. This new first edition did have gilded edges, as Macmillan advised Dodgson to adopt this. It sold for 7s 6d. (source: Zoe Jaques and Eugene Gidders, “Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. A Publishing History”, Ashgate Studies in Publishing History, Ashgate Publishing, 2016)

Dodgson was not only very particular about the printing of his book, but also kept a tight reign on how Macmillan was promoting the volume, and wanted to be kept informed about how it was selling. He also tried to influence its pricing several times, and thought about making it available in different formats, like a cheap edition for middle class children.

As the book was an immediate success, a second edition was printed soon, consisting of two print runs of 2,000 each in September 1866. It was published in November 1866. By the end of 1866, 5,000 copies had already been sold. The third edition (2,000 copies) therefore appeared in 1867, as did the fourth (2,500 copies). The fifth appeared in 1868. (source: Zoe Jaques and Eugene Gidders, “Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. A Publishing History”, Ashgate Studies in Publishing History, Ashgate Publishing, 2016)

Since the second edition, issues of the Macmillan books have the date and number of the ‘thousand’ on the title page, as was a binding convention, up to the 98th thousand in 1932. This number indicates the number of issued books in thousands. For example, if the 1st and 2nd edition had consisted of 6,000 copies, and the 3rd edition would consist of 3,500 copies, books from the 3rd edition would be copies of the 6th thousand to the 9th thousand. So copies of the 7th and 8th thousand are from different print runs, but from the same edition. It also means that copies of the same thousand can be from different editions.

Dodgson kept scrutinizing all editions of his tale, complaining often to Macmillan about the quality of the printing, pictures, and typesetting. It was very obvious that he was more concerned about the look of his book than of the profit he was making. In one of his letters to Macmillan he wrote: “So long as it is really handsome, its paying or not is a matter of minor importance.”

Macmillan’s last reprint was in 1942."

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