Elementary Treatise on Determinants 1867

This next book that I would like to showcase is a book that I wanted very much for the collection.

In 1867 Dodgson published his Elementary Treatise on Determinants and 750 copies were printed as

the first and only edition. In the field of mathematics it was an important contribution and a

landmark work subsequently recognised by many experts.

I had owned a copy previously for a year or two but that copy was in a calf prize binding, not in it’s

original brown cloth and endpapers. I sold that copy to Blackwell’s rare book department making a

very good profit when I needed some cash to help buy another important item. It then became a

goal to acquire a copy of the Determinants in original cloth and when the Denis Crutch Sale came

along I bid enthusiastically for the Crutch copy which fell to me for £3,900 (including premium).

Since this sale, there has been another copy auctioned but the Crutch copy is not repaired in any

way and only has some gentle fraying of the cloth at the tips of the spine.

The amusing story that goes around (without any truth) about Queen Victoria asking Mr Dodgson

for his next work after Alice in 1865 is flawed in any case because that would have been his 1866

pamphlet Condensation of Determinants (a copy in original wrappers is in this collection).

College Rhymes

Before the web, book collecting was a very physical hobby and searching through hundreds of second hand books on hundreds of shelves was the basic mode of grazing. Scanning spines for titles, the perusal was in itself exciting, holding in one’s mind the hope of a rare find. With the advent of the web and search engines, the search could easily become a quick daily event for new arrivals. In this way I found one day a set of the rare Oxford periodical College Rhymes, containing all of Lewis Carroll’s fourteen contributions and all in original cloth. The last three volumes (without Carroll contributions) were not present but eleven out of fourteen volumes wasn’t bad. He had been editor of the magazine from July 1862 to March 1863. I have never seen a set since which tends to affirm the price (£1,400). When a bookseller lists an item that hasn't cropped up for sale for decades, he has to pitch it without any previous comparatitive figures. There was a partial set sold in the 1950s. The seller was Jeffrey Stern of York, once a Lewis Carroll collector himself, whose collection is now at Seitoku Gakuin College in Tokyo.

Lewis Carroll's Library - 2

In June 2000 Bloomsbury Auctions sold the Denis Crutch collection of Lewis Carroll. Denis was a founder member of the Lewis Carroll Society and co-editor of the Lewis Carroll Handbook and had a large and important collection of original items. I bought a second book from Carroll’s library, again with a very good provenance. Thomas Hood’s Petsetilla’s Posy / A Fairy Tale for Young and Old, with elaborate green cloth gilt, original grey endpapers and 50 engravings by the Dalziel Brothers had been published in 1870 by Routledge. It appeared for sale in Blackwell’s catalogue 433 in 1938 with a description of the intertwined CLD monogram in purple ink and had eventually found its’ way into the Crutch collection and then into mine. It would have been prized by Carroll for its whimsical tales and illustrations, engraved by the Dalziels , who of course engraved Tenniel’s illustrations for the Alice books.

1998 The Lewis Carroll Centenary Year

The year 1998 was the centenary of the death of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and awareness and appreciation ran at high levels.

My experience of a live auction opened the door a little for me to collect further and, this time at provincial auction houses I acquired three scarce items quite cheaply.  These were the first and third editions of Curiosa Mathematica Part II (Pillow Problems) and a copy of the fifth thousand (1867) of Alice. Following the 4,000 copies of the first published edition in 1866, this book was in original cloth in good/very good condition with a repairable separation at the upper hinge of about an inch and fell to me for £140 hammer price, which was a treat as I’d expected to pay up to £450. Later the same year I bought Notes by An Oxford Chiel from James Cummins of New York. This is a collection of six Dodgson pamphlets bound together without a general contents page, all edges gilt, green cloth with a single gilt border (no corner dots) with orig. yellow endpapers and published in 1874. I had wanted a copy since arriving in Oxford in 1993 but had not found one in the local bookshops.

The last picture here shows my copy of The New Belfry of Christ Church, Oxford, and the first of Dodgson’s Oxford pamphlets and also published in the volume already mentioned. This is a fine copy and belonged to Harold Hartley, the famous Carroll collector. It came from Bloomsbury auctions 24 June 1999.

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.