6 Lewis Carroll first editions are documented on this shelf, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1876) to Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Lewis Carroll title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Lewis Carroll copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — 1865 (suppressed); 1866 (first published) · Macmillan and Co.The 1865 first printing of 2,000 copies, with the text printed at the Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), was suppressed at Tenniel's insistence because he was dissatisfied with the impression of his illustrations (the pictures showed through the leaf). Only about 50 copies had been bound before withdrawal, and roughly 23 are recorded today — the true first. Point: title page dated 1865, over the…. True first = the suppressed 1865 Macmillan with the Oxford-printed text, an extreme rarity (about 23 known). First obtainable = the reset 1866 Macmillan printed by Richard Clay. The 'Appleton Alice' (New York, 1866) is made from the original suppressed 1865 Oxford sheets fitted with a cancel title leaf, so it is a variant issue of the true first printing rather than a later reprint. Author-inscribed copies are…. The reset 1866 Macmillan and all later Macmillan printings are not the suppressed 1865 first; a copy dated 1866 with the Richard Clay text is the first published edition, not the true first. Facsimiles of the 1865 exist.
- Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There — 1872 (dated 1871) · Macmillan and Co.First edition with title page dated 1871 (issued December 1871). The decisive first-issue point is that page 21 PRESENTS the misprint 'wade' for 'wabe' in the gloss to the 'Jabberwocky' verse; this was corrected to 'wabe' in later printings. Tenniel illustrations throughout; red cloth gilt. Catalogued as Williams-Madan-Green-Crutch 84. The Macmillan edition dated 1871 (issued 1872) is the true first. The first issue HAS 'wade' for 'wabe' on page 21; the presence of this misprint distinguishes the first issue from later corrected printings. Later Macmillan printings correct 'wade' to 'wabe' on page 21.
- The Hunting of the Snark — 1876 · Macmillan and Co.First edition, London: Macmillan and Co., 1876, octavo, with nine wood-engraved illustrations by Henry Holiday. Bound in pictorial buff (pale brown) cloth gilt designed by Holiday, showing the Bellman on the ship's yardarm within a ruled border, all edges gilt, black endpapers. The key first-issue text point is 'Baker' (not 'Butcher') on page 83. Carroll also had a small number of copies bound in red, blue,…. The London Macmillan and Co. 1876 edition is the true first. The buff pictorial cloth is the standard trade binding of the first; the coloured presentation bindings are contemporaneous gift copies. Later Macmillan reprints lack the 'Baker'/page-83 point and show differing binding and advertisement states.
- Sylvie and Bruno — 1889 · Macmillan and Co.Octavo, collating xxiii, [1], 400pp, with forty-six illustrations (ten full-page) by Harry Furniss and a tissue-guarded frontispiece. The standard Carroll bibliography (Williams, Madan & Green, The Lewis Carroll Handbook) catalogues the first edition as entry 217. The publisher's first-edition binding is full red cloth: boards ruled in a triple gilt frame with a gilt medallion illustration to the front and rear…. Sylvie and Bruno (1889) is the first of two volumes; the story concludes in the separate Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (Macmillan, 1893), catalogued by Williams, Madan & Green as entry 250. The two volumes were issued nearly four years apart and were never published as a single first-edition unit.
- The Nursery Alice — 1890 · Macmillan and Co.Contains twenty color-enlarged versions of Tenniel's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland illustrations, redrawn, enlarged, and colored under Tenniel's supervision, with the text abridged and rewritten by Carroll for younger readers. The published first edition -- the corrected second impression, dated 1890 on the title page -- carries a stated price on the title page and shows Alice with her back to the reader in…. Carroll rejected the entire original 1889 impression of 10,000 copies as 'far too bright and gaudy' and withheld its sale in Britain; roughly 4,000 of the suppressed 1889 sheets were instead exported for sale in America (unpriced title page, dated 1889, Macmillan London imprint), while Macmillan issued a corrected second impression, dated 1890 on the title page, for the British market. It is this March 1890…. The rejected 1889 sheets were later worked off as an unpriced 'People's Edition,' and a fourth issue followed in 1897 with an amended, cheaper price label; these later, cheaper issues are not the corrected 1890 first published edition.
- Sylvie and Bruno Concluded — 1893 · Macmillan and Co.Octavo, collating xxxi, [1], 423, [1]pp, with forty-six illustrations (ten full-page) by Harry Furniss and a tissue-guarded frontispiece. First-edition copies carry four pages of Macmillan's advertising catalogue at the rear plus a fifth leaf reproducing a facsimile specimen page from Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground. The standard identifying point for the first issue is in the table of contents: Chapter….
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