Alice’s Recalled First Edition

The story as it is told

In 1865 Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland came out, and it went wrong. The first printing was a failure, the story says, and Carroll pulled it from sale.

That was the end of it. The edition was gone, and the book that had begun as a story told to a little girl on a boat trip had stumbled at the first step.

What we can confirm

The recall is real. Tenniel disliked how the printing came out and Dodgson withdrew it. The 1865 edition did not vanish, though. Bound copies already given away were recalled and sent to hospitals and institutions, and the unbound sheets were sold to Appleton in New York, who issued them in 1866. The second wave came in 1907, when the UK copyright ran out and at least seven new illustrated editions appeared by Christmas.

On July 4, 1862, Charles Dodgson of Christ Church, Oxford took a boat trip "up the river to Godstow" with the Rev. Robinson Duckworth of Trinity College and the three eldest daughters of the Dean of Christ Church: Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell. The Lewis Carroll Society, whose publishing history this account follows, says the first outlines of the story were told on that trip, and that Alice asked him to write it down. He began the manuscript of Alice's Adventures under Ground on November 13, 1862, finished it on February 10, 1863, and in November 1864 gave Alice the volume, illustrated with his own drawings.

By then he had already decided to expand it for publication, encouraged by the novelist Henry Kingsley and the family of George MacDonald, and had commissioned John Tenniel to draw the pictures. Macmillan published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on commission, meaning Dodgson paid the costs, in July 1865. The Oxford University Press printed 2,000 copies.

Only 50 had been bound when Tenniel told Dodgson he was unhappy with how the pictures had printed. Dodgson withdrew the edition and asked people who had received presentation copies to send them back. The rejected copies went to children's hospitals and institutions. The Society says 23 copies of the "1865 Alice" are known to survive. A new printer, Richard Clay of Bungay, produced a second edition of 2,000 in November 1865, which Dodgson called a "perfect piece of artistic printing."

The unbound 1865 sheets didn't go to waste. In April 1866 they were sold to D. Appleton & Co. of New York, bound in England with a new title page, and published as the "Appleton Alice." The printing its author rejected became the Appleton edition sold in the United States.

Through the Looking-Glass followed at Christmas 1871, in an edition of 9,000 dated 1872. At Tenniel's suggestion, a chapter called "The Wasp in a Wig" was dropped before publication.

Dodgson died in 1898, and Macmillan kept issuing new editions. In 1907, the Society notes, the copyright in Alice's Adventures expired, and by Christmas 1907 at least seven versions illustrated by new artists had been published, including Arthur Rackham's, Charles Robinson's and Harry Rountree's. More than 150 artists have illustrated it since. That holiday season of 1907 is an early, well-documented example of what a public-domain date does: a wave of new versions arriving at once.

The manuscript has its own afterlife. Alice kept it until 1928, when it was sold at Sotheby's for £15,400 to Dr Rosenbach, who sold it to Eldridge Johnson. In 1948 a group of American donors bought it and presented it to the British Museum. It's now held by the British Library.

The facts

• July 4, 1862 boat trip; manuscript Nov 13, 1862 to Feb 10, 1863; given to Alice in Nov 1864; Kingsley and MacDonald family urged publication; Macmillan on commission, July 1865, 2,000 printed by OUP; 50 bound when Tenniel complained; withdrawn; copies to hospitals; 23 survive; second edition Nov 1865 by Richard Clay; Appleton sheets April 1866; Looking-Glass Christmas 1871, 9,000, dated 1872; "Wasp in a Wig"; copyright expired 1907; at least 7 new illustrated versions by Christmas 1907; Rackham, Robinson, Rountree (1907); over 150 illustrators; 1928 Sotheby's £15,400 to Rosenbach; 1948 gift to the British Museum. Lewis Carroll Society, "Publishing of Alice," lewiscarrollsociety.org.uk

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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