Some Mathematical Titles by Dodgson

At the Denis Crutch collection sale I also bought a copy of the second edition of Euclid and His Modern Rivals in original crimson cloth, one of 250 copies printed in 1885 ( lot 200). It would be six years later until I found a copy of the first edition (print run also 250 in 1879) on ABE books website, shown in the photograph. The work is a mathematical drama and described in WMGC 128.

On the same theme – mathematical works by C.L. Dodgson – the pictures also show two editions of Euclid Books I, II. Copies of these books are surprisingly rare and difficult to find. The title went through eight editions and would have literally poured into class rooms – where have they all gone?

Two editions, a first and third, of Curiosa Mathematica A New Theory of Parallels are shown, both acquired from book sellers in the UK. All of these mathematical books, without any special provenance or inscriptions and in good condition cost in the low three figures to buy. Later I will show rarer mathematical pamphlets and books.

Value and Rarity : Six Letters and Other Booklets

In collecting I found that studying the bibliographies for the rarer items was very stimulating. Certain tricks of the net became useful tools, for example entering various parts of a title into Google searches and finding items in bookseller itineries or catalogues. Sometimes these would be enticed in to view when the bookseller had mis-spelt the author’s name or other basic error. Today’s blog illustrates some items that also show that rare doesn’t equate to valuable. The India Alice, a booklet prepared for a Grolier Club dinner in 1966, describes the finding of one of the few 1865 Alice’s on the floor of a bookshop in Bangalore and its subsequent journey to Warren Weaver’s collection. This I held as especially desirable for a long time – a collecting whim – and when I spotted it in a literature catalogue one day I telephoned to secure it –but it had been sold that morning. Five years later I found this copy on eBay, with the dinner card of Lew Feldman still with it (the famous book dealer El Dieff) and a great inscription. Another rarity is the Six Letters – no 3 of only 26 copies printed; not valuable as such but try and find one! There are others which I will blog about in future posts.

Eldridge Johnson's Facsimile Edition of Alice's Adventures Under Ground

In 1936, Eldridge Johnson, who owned the original manuscript of Alice, written and drawn by Dodgson for Alice, commissioned Max Jaffe of Vienna to print a number of copies in collotype of a facsimile edition. The number is not known for certain but most people state 75 unnumbered copies in green morocco with a slipcase. Several other facsimile editions have been published but this one is the finest and nearest to the original, now housed in the British Library. The oval photograph of Alice Liddell that had been hidden for many years until it’s’ discovery by Morten Cohen, is shown on the last page, with the loose final leaf that came with the Johnson facsimile. Copies of this book today usually sell for £1000 plus, though I was lucky enough to get this copy for a fraction of that in 2000 on the internet.

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.