en association avec

Le chef-d’œuvre de Lewis Carroll : un des grands livres d’enfants de la littérature universelle.
Avec Alice aux pays des merveilles, Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) fut le premier écrivain à traiter
les enfants comme un public digne du même respect que les adultes. Le personnage d’Alice
fit vite figure de mythe : plus de 100 000 exemplaires vendus du vivant de l’auteur.
Sans en avoir été le créateur, l’infatigable logicien invente un genre nouveau, le nonsense.
L’aspect onirique et délirant du récit – surréaliste avant l’heure -, a fait dire à André Breton :
“Tous ceux qui gardent le sens de la révolte reconnaîtront en Lewis Carroll leur premier
maître d’école buissonnière.”
(One hundred Books famous in Children’s Literature, The Grolier Club, 2014, n° 35 : “In November 1865
(but dated 1866 for the Christmas market), the first edition was published and immediately
sold out […] The story has become a universal reference for art, marketing, pop culture and
political satire.”)
Ravissante reliure en maroquin rouge de la fin du XIX e siècle ornée d’un décor Art
nouveau mosaïqué.
Printing and the Mind of Man, nº 354 : “The first edition, familiarly known to book-collectors as ‘the 1865 Alice’, was printed at
the Oxford University Press. This edition was at the last moment cancelled by the author, for whom Macmillan’s were publishing
‘on commission’ (i.e. as agents, not sponsors) because of what was considered the poor printing of Sir John Tenniel’s almost
equally famous illustrations. The few early copies sent out were recalled ; seemingly with fair success, since less than a score
are known to survive today. The book was then reprinted, by Clay, with the title-page re-dated 1866, and this constitutes the first
regularly published edition.”
6 000 / 8 000 €