This Lewis Carroll book is titled Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and was published in Boston by Lee & Shepard and in New York by Lee, Shepard, and Dillingham in 1872. The book has a great colored cover, gilt lettering and gilt decorations on the spine, ads for books published by Lee & Shepard on the front and rear endpapers, a half-title, then the frontispiece in black-and-white showing the king and queen of hearts, the title page, which says the book has forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel, one page listing the Contents, poetry on the next three pages,  192 pages of text, and ads for Juvenile Books by Lee & Shepard on the back cover. 

Lewis Carroll was actually the pen name for Charles Dodgson (1832 - 1898), an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer, and church deacon, and he was noted for his word play, logic, and fantasy. 

The Victorian artist John Tenniel (1820 – 1914) is most famous for his vivid illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), all written by Lewis Carroll / Charles Dodgson, and the book is all about Alice's vivid imagination as she tries to navigate her way through the absurd and unpredictable world she finds herself in. 

The book was originally printed in Oxford at the Clarendon Press in June 1865, but was  suppressed when Carroll heard that Tenniel was dissatisfied with the quality of the printing.    So a first edition with better quality illustrations came out in 1866, and it is pricey. It can run you anywhere from a few thousand dollars up to $27,000 or so for a fine edition, and this copy is much more affordable. 

The book shows its age. It measures 7 3/8 x 5 1/4 inches wide and has wear at the heel and crown, rounded corners on the covers, a weak hinge in front, and loss at one corner on the rear endpapers, but the book is still worth it. It was printed only seven years after the first edition, most copies by Lee & Shepard have fancy covers and are expensive, and this copy has very colorful front and rear covers that seem to deviate from the norm - the book might be hard to find with these covers - and it could be a choice purchase for someone who loves Lewis Carroll books or who has a child in the family who might like to know what a copy of the book looked like in 1872.

Size: 7 3/8 x 5 1/4 x 1 in. 

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