The Nursery Alice.: With text adapted to Nursery Readers.

London: Macmillan and Co.,, 1890. One of 100 copies inscribed by the author Second edition (the first published in the UK), first issue, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, "For Olive, from the Author. Mar. 25, 1890". The recipient was Olive Augusta Langton Clarke who Carroll met in September 1883. Her father was both a clergyman and an inventor, and a close friend of the author's. The original idea for a simplified version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland came to Lewis Carroll in 1881. He conceived a book with simplified text and pictures printed in colour. In 1886, the book was announced as being in preparation. The first edition was printed in 1889 and Carroll, mirroring his behaviour over the original publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, rejected the printing with the complaint that the illustrations were "far too bright and gaudy". The rejected sheets would eventually be issued in the US in 1890 (and then in the UK in 1891 and 1897). The second edition, published in 1890, was therefore the first published edition and on 25 March 1890 Carroll inscribed around 100 presentation copies, having recorded the names and (mostly) addresses of recipients in an exercise book. Describing the new printing in his diary, Carroll stated that "it is a great success" (Diaries, p. 506). The most notable alteration between the first and second editions is the printing of the sheets on white rather than toned paper and the change to the illustration of "Alice and the Cheshire Cat" on p. 34, removing Alice's profile. The first issue has "Price four shillings" above the imprint. Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch call for "an inserted printed slip advertising Sylvie and Bruno" which is frequently missing, but present in this copy. Carroll's exercise book recording the names and addresses of recipients, includes Olive Langton Clarke as entry number 45. She is listed as living at 25 Clarendon Square, Leamington. Carroll first met the Clarkes at Whitburn in October 1864. James Langton Clarke (1833-1916) attended University College, Durham (obtaining a BA in 1856 and MA 1857). He was a curate of Whitburn 1858-60, and afterwards curate at Leamington from 1885. Given this gap, it is assumed that he had some independent means. In 1857 he married Frances Mary Harrison (b. 1835), daughter of the railway engineer Thomas Elliott Harrison, and the couple had 14 children. Olive Augusta was the youngest and born in 1880. In 1904, James Langton Clarke published The Eternal Saviour-Judge. He was also an inventor of items such as a mechanical pencil-sharpener (and applied for six different patents between 1863 and 1885). The Langton Clarkes were friends of the Wilcoxes (related to Carroll), and James Langton Clarke officiated at the christening of Mary Dorothea Wilcox in October 1859. A collection of photographs taken by Carroll of the Langton Clarkes is now at the Chicago Art Institute. Provenance: Sotheby's, 25-27 July 1927, lot 571; Quaritch; Thomas and Jania Erwin. Tall octavo. Original white cloth-backed white glazed pictorial boards designed by E. Gertrude Thomson, front cover lettered in red and black. Printed slip advertising Sylvie and Bruno loosely inserted. Housed in a custom red linen chemise and red cloth slipcase by James Macdonald (of New York). Colour frontispiece with tissue-guard and 19 colour illustrations after John Tenniel. Book label of Thomas and Jania Erwin on front pastedown. Binding somewhat worn and soiled with extremities worn, some abrasions to rear cover, some light finger-soiling; else a good and attractive copy. Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch 216, Edward Wakeling, ed., Lewis Carroll's Diaries, 2004.