Weekly Geeks: Collecting a Single Book

Today's assignment on the Weekly Geeks assignment is to discuss collecting a single book, and I think among the best books to consider with this topic might be Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Of course, I MIGHT be a little biased. On Amazon alone a search for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" brings up 6,347 different listings.

Here's a copy of this book that I own. I've read Alice several times, but I did not read this particular copy. I love how it has color plates and also that it was obviously printed with moveable type on a letter press. All the letters and pictures are actually pressed into the paper. It's a subtle thing, but for some reason it seems so lush and textural to me. I tried researching this edition because it doesn't have a copyright page or date on it. The best I could find was that it was probably published in the 1920s or '30s. (If someone reading this knows better, please leave a note in the comments!)

 

Here's a photo of the interior with one of the illustrations. This edition features illustrations by John Tenniel and Elenore Abbott. The Tenniel illustrations are black and white and are the illustrations that most people think of when talking about this book.

Getting back to editions of Alice's Adventures, it looks like a person could very easily spend a lot of money collecting copies. The most expensive copy on Amazon is this 1866 edition, which the seller is offering for $25,000 US.

Also among the most expensive copies is a limited edition published in 2005 that was Illustrated by artist Anne Bachelier. Here is more of Bachelier's work.

Here are some editions that won't exactly put you in the poor house:

This 2003 Edition illustrated by Iassen Ghiuselev.

 

My favorite Alice illustrator is Arthur Rackham. Here is a recently published edition with the Rackham illustrations and a page (in Spanish, sorry) with nice scans of the illustrations and cover of the 1907 edition.

Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice - The Definitive Edition.

The amazingly cool Ralph Steadman (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) illustrated edition.

 Robert Sabuda's fabulous Pop-Up Adaptation.

Well, I could do this all day, but I don't want to. I'm going to leave you with a very nice (but kind of slow) site which has an A to Z illustrated encyclopedia of artists who have illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

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