Books: A century after his death, Lewis Carroll booksare much in demand by collectors

Lasting appeal of a master storyteller

The 100th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's death is ratherlate to begin collecting him in earnest, and books for sticky little fingerstend not to survive in a good state. But looking out for a single authoraround the ABA fair is one way to explore this newly expanded event - andthe copies of Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark just discernibleon the cover of the catalogue are a good omen for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

David and Denise Carlson (D & D of New Jersey) areworking on a reference book listing the Carrolliana - letters, manuscripts,books from his library and so on - sold at auction since 1893. It willrun to more than 3,000 items.

Nevertheless, to find 12 or 15 presentation copies forsale under one roof is remarkable. For L50,000 you could buy more Carrollat Olympia than you could carry.

For a $16,000 start (L10,750), the Carlsons are offeringa second edition of Doublets: A Word-Puzzle bearing a presentation inscriptionto one of the two dedicatees, Julia Arnold (a grand-daughter of Dr Arnoldof Rugby and later the mother of Aldous Huxley). Julia and her sister Ethelhad inspired Carroll to invent the game of forming links between two words:HEAD, heal, teal, tell, tall, TAIL.

But the links must be decorous. Words that some playershad tried to get away with inspired a riff of scornful nonsense from Carroll,who wrote that he felt "quite unable to sweal the chaffy spelt, to silethe pory cole, or to swill a spate from a piny ait to the song of the spink".But though he makes play of them, words were a serious business in VictorianOxford. The real Alice's father, Henry Liddell, was a lexicographer, andin the year Carroll invented Doublets, 1879, James Murray first drew hissalary as editor of the great Oxford English Dictionary (which is capaciousenough to include all those words and Carroll's own "Jabberwock").

Carroll intended to compile a book of his puzzles, butnever did. Twenty-five years ago, John Fisher filled the gap with The Magicof Lewis Carroll, which includes conjuring tricks of the period and showshow convoluted and intricate this particular magician's mind could be.Look out at the fair, also, for the grand two-volume edition of Carroll'sletters edited by Morton N. Cohen (1979).

Good biographies include those by Cohen, Anne Clark, DerekHudson and Stuart Dodgson Collingwood - but avoid those by Langford Reedand Walter de la Mare.

Bromlea Books will be showing a range of Carroll items,including a set of LPs and a presentation copy of the manuscript facsimileof Alice's Adventures Underground which appeared in 1886. George RobertKane has an inscribed Phantasmagoria and is asking L2,300. Children's specialistsM & D Reeve of Oxford have an Alice panorama with moving pictures fromabout 1915, and would not look uffish at L695.

Simon Finch has yet another presentation copy to one ofthe little girls Carroll liked to photograph in those days of irrecoverableinnocence: a Snark for L3,000. Other Snarks in his special red bindingare at Books and Things (L750, rather rubbed) and Nigel Williams (L2,975,inscribed on publication day in 1876).

But the great prizes are, of course, the Alices. AdrianHarrington, who has a new shop in Kensington Church Street, is offeringthe first edition of Wonderland from America, where it appeared earlierthan in England, using the sheets printed by Oxford University Press in1865 which Sir John Tenniel condemned as "disgraceful".

An overwritten footnote about the matter in the Lettersconcludes: "Both Dodgson and Tenniel would be stunned to know that a singlecopy of that 'inferior' first edition brings thousands of pounds when itcomes up for sale. So choice a book has it become that collectors wouldtrade whole segments of their libraries for a single copy of the 'first'Alice, bibliographers dream of uncovering an unrecorded copy, and literarychroniclers are at a loss to explain how, even in the heyday of Victorianpublishing, such extravagant decisions could be made over a single children'sbook." The note goes on to give seven bibliographical references to suchplaces as The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.

Harrington, who would part with his "single copy" forL2,750, is a lot calmer, describing it as "scarce", which - as John Carter'sABC for Book-Collectors explains - is a more modest claim than rare, exceedinglyor notoriously rare, or (the trump) unrecorded and apparently unique. Thisis just as well, because there will be two other copies of the AmericanWonderland at the fair. Snicker-snack.

Harrington is among several dealers with English firstsof Alice. His copies, both restored, are offered for L3,250, but pricesvary a lot. My copy of Looking-Glass cost less than L100, but needs togo to the binder. As the sequel to an established favourite, it had a longerprint run, and so is always cheaper than Wonderland. In 1988, the RocketPress printed all of Tenniel's Alice illustrations for the first time directfrom the engraved woodblocks. Several sets were divided by dealers, soplates of this exquisite work appear regularly.

Of the many interpretations of Carroll by later illustrators,Barry Moser's Pennyroyal Edition is the most lavish, and unslavish, beingboldly American and quite unlike Tenniel. The limited edition is unwieldyand exorbitant, but it was beautifully reprinted by the University of CaliforniaPress in 1983.

It is said that Lewis Carroll is more often quoted inParliament than anyone but Shakespeare. A newspaper columnist who triesto see Europe's political topsy-turvydom right-side-up tells me that hecan compare its goings on only with Orwell, Kafka and Wonderland. NigelWilliam's fair inventory describes John Bull's Adventures in the FiscalBlunderland as "a topical political parody". As topical now as it was onpublication in 1904, I fear. Subsidiarity? Convergence? Communitaire? "SpeakEnglish!" said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those longwords, and what's more, I don't believe you do either!"

Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd.