Periodical Contributions by Lewis Carroll

Sometimes items that one finds are not intrinsically valuable but are rare and desirable even so. Lewis Carroll is no exception. I saw these separate paper-bound issues of Aunt Judy’s Magazine in a catalogue issued by the West Country children’s bookseller Christopher Holtom. The 1867 issue shown contains Castle Croquet, which the author had first published as a pamphlet. When I ordered the item I was told it had been sold. Would I give up at that? Not likely - I asked Chris Holtom if he would forward a letter to the purchaser, which he agreed to do, asking if a swap for some other issues would be possible and, luckily, the purchaser replied in the affirmative as she had no particular collecting interest in Carroll.

The bound volumes of this periodical are not hard to find unlike individual parts. Another has the music and words to The Walrus and the Carpenter.

Many other periodicals exist with Lewis Carroll content and present a challenging quest for the collector. Another example is Notes and Queries, and some individual parts are in my collection. On 23 December 1871 a review of Behind The Looking Glass and What Alice Saw There appeared, remarkable as the book Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There was published at Christmas.

See Charlie Lovett’s excellent and comprehensive book Lewis Carroll And The Press ( Oak Knoll and British Library 1999) for details of Dodgson’s contributions to periodicals.

Lewis Carroll's Library - first find

There is nothing like having children to focus the mind of a book collector. From the pecuniary point of view this helps to tame the beast that is acquisitive collecting, in my case from 1993 to 1997. In 1998 I joined the world on the information highway and found sites such as ABE and forthcoming auction search engines, online booksellers and Ebay. Collecting would never be the same again, clicks of the mouse being easier than the traumas of searching bookshops with an empty stomach and full bladder.

And so with much joy one day , as the term “Dodgson” was tapped into the search box on a forthcoming auctions search engine, I learned that Christie’s in New York would be auctioning the famous Norman Haskell Library. The only item of relevance to my collecting was Lewis Carroll’s personal copy of  On Obscure Diseases of The Brain and Disorders of The Mind by Forbes Winslow, and was furthermore the only Dodgson item in the whole three part sale. The book, in original plum cloth, with Dodgson’s signature, and previous owners’ book labels, in a solander case, would be mine I hoped. The estimate was around £500. With my medical background and interest in Lewis Carroll’s library and influences I “ had to have” this as people say. With a naivety matching perhaps that of a hedgehog attempting to cross the M5 I took to the telephone and bid live for the book, as did one or two other keen fellows and the book fell to me at £2,622  including premium. looking back I don’t think that I had anticipated the strength of the forces that operate in a bidder in a live auction situation. It’s like an emotional tug-of-war. Never the less owning the book has been a pleasure and led to collecting several more books from Carroll’s library at  Christ Church, plus a picture that hung there with his notation on the back.

The Snowball Effect , Condition and Rarity

After securing Tom Brown’s School Days, which I regard as a cornerstone of the collection, several other things came along notably the limited signed edition of For The Train, a copy of Doublets ( second ed.) and around 40 other items for the rest of 1992 from book fairs and catalogues. I think I became aware at this point that a snowball was rolling and that Tom Brown’s School Days had been a catalyst for further acquisitions.

In 1993 I concentrated on finding editions of the 6/- Macmillan Alice’s and built up a good series in good condition and overall adding a further 40 items to the collection, then housed in my grandfather’s splendid antique cabinet.

I began to realise condition as fundamental and passed over a number of first editions of, for example, Rhyme ? And Reason? ( 1883) before choosing a fine copy for £120 in the wonderful children’s book shop of Glenda Wallis in Bath, which was a price based on the fine condition ( rather than very good, good, fair or poor). This principle held throughout the 25 years and although not as insistent as Morris Parrish I put condition at the top of the agenda as often as rarity allowed .

 At the London June Book Fairs in 1993, at the Café Royale, I found my copy of Parrish’s Tour in 1867, one of 66 unnumbered copies, still in original glassine wrapper and box. This privately printed rare book contains a transcript of Dodgson’s Russian trip with his companion Henry Liddon and is definitely one of the books that a rare book collector will be teased about for not reading. As  this copy has been protected in wrapper and box it is in very fine condition, to be admired, but not handled or, heaven forbid, read.  The bookseller said that it had come to him via a niece of Morris Parrish. This was the first time that I had experienced the collector’s dilemma – a  jaw-dropping wonderment at the discovery of the book coupled with a visceral fear of the financial consequences. I was entering unchartered territory. I baulked at the price on the book, £250, and was advised by the bookseller to go for a walk, establish in my own mind if I really wanted the book and to then return if I did to talk about price. This was one of those almost fabled items which one read about in bibliographies – principally The Lewis Carroll Handbook, known as WMGC after its’ editors – and in collection catalogues – and was highly desirable. You might see it once and never again. I returned and haggled for all I was worth ( pun) until the price looked bearable at £190. All these years later I still marvel at this beautifully produced item and haven’t seen another copy for sale in wrapper and box since.

Personal Contacts

Visits to book fairs and personal contacts with the local booksellers followed on as sources, armed with the essential bibliographies. I got myself on to mailing lists for catalogues and bought that way too. Always thinking laterally I would go for the less obvious shelves like philosophy in Thoemme’s bookshop at the top of Park Street and found a copy of Symbolic Logic in original cloth, now adept at negotiating price.

A conversation in the pub led to this next milestone acquisition. My fellow tenor in our church choir, Charles, put up with some effusive banter from me about my new hobby and then declared that he had a book that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson had initialled and given to his brother Skeffington. I put down my pint of beer and asked him to repeat what he’d just said. He did so and added that he had found it in the corn market book stall and paid £1 for it, a copy of Tom Brown’s School Days. If I could find a copy with the same illustrations by Hughes and Hall he would let me have the book in exchange. Well he  didn’t have to wait too long! Here is the book and inscription. 

By this time I had joined the Lewis Carroll Society and on 3 May 1992 I joined them for a meeting at the then President Ellis Hillman’s house in London and took the book along to show them. They nodded wisely and agreeably and the doctor gentleman who I mentioned before diagnosed my condition there and then, with my wife alongside me. I had a kind of bug. In those days it was thought to be incurable. Their faces were grave and playful at the same time.

Introduction

Next year  marks the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 

Between now and then this illustrated blog will unfold one collectors’ story with photographs of all the key items from a collection that was started from scratch. On a rainy afternoon in Bristol 25 years ago I spotted a piece in a medical weekly magazine about a doctor who was a Lewis Carroll collector. The photograph showed a man and a pile of his antiquarian Alice books and before I could say “ Brillig” a dormant part of me was roused from a long hibernation. As a boy I had collected football cards, stamps, and various small animals and then must have had a long pause to collect knowledge instead out of necessity. I wrote to the gentleman and received a very warm and encouraging response and knew that I too would like to become a Lewis Carroll collector.

On my doorstep were a large number of secondhand bookshops and I first tried my luck in Robert’s bookshop on The Triangle in Clifton. I had no idea what I was doing. The barn-like musty-smelling dim interior contained several people acting in a fairly odd manner, moving very slowly along rows of books and every now and then pulling one off a shelf with a hand extended like a crow’s claw. The proprietor was stirred from his reverie at times  for the melancholy ritual of the exchange of book and paper bag for a few pence in time with the tapping of the rain on the roof. In this fashion I bought my first item, a copy of a miniature edition of The Hunting of the Snark, and a similar early reprint of the miniature edition of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. The price was written in pencil inside and I learned shortly afterwards that it was OK to enquire about the price even though it could be read ever so clearly and I remember getting my queerest looks of all from booksellers who I didn’t haggle with.

Travelling with my fiancée to see my parents in Bridgnorth that summer I explored the teetering stacks of secondhand books in the now extinct shop at the top of the steps in High Town. Rubbing his chin, the owner of the shop recalled he had an Alice book waiting to be repaired at home and that he could produce this after lunch. This book was a milestone as it required more cash than I had been used to giving for any second hand book but more importantly it was in fact a bargain for an early edition of the masterpiece that was Alice. Then the fellow slit the book from top to toe with a repairer’s knife revealing the inner layers of newspaper that binders used to use, making me wince. He repaired it expertly and handed it over for £30. I thought it was utterly beautiful and still do. This “sixteenth thousand” printing from 1869 was the first of many of this style of Alice binding that I acquired, matched by similar printings of Looking Glass.

1869 ( Sixteenth thousand) Alice, Macmillan London.