(DALI, Salvador.) CARROLL, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1969. Peter Harrington.

(DALI, Salvador.) [DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge.] CARROLL, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Published: New York: Maecenas Press - Random House, 1969.

Presented by Ben Houston of Peter Harrington Rare Books.

Folio. Publisher’s solander box of brown straight-grain morocco by Cartonnages Adine (Paris), leather-and-horn ties, gilt lettered spine, black silk portfolios for letterpress and illustrations, lettered in gilt on front covers. With all the original packaging material, including the shipping box. 12 colour heliogravures and a four-colour etched frontispiece on Rives paper; together with a second suite of 12 plates on Japon Nacre paper. Title page, divisional titles and initial letters printed in bisque. An excellent copy.

First and limited Dalí edition, number XII of 200 copies, signed by Dali at the foot of the frontispiece and on the title page. “The artist Salvador Dalí, famous for his surreal images of melting clocks and barren landscapes, at first glance might not seem to have much in common with a retiring Victorian English don who wrote children’s books. But actually, Dalí and Carroll had much in common: both men were ardent explorers of dreams and the imagination, attempting in their art to show the fertile pathways to the unconscious. This artistic temperament might explain why, in his sixties, Dalí created twelve surreal illustrations – one for each chapter – for Alice in Wonderland. Because he required a rich, lush palette for his painted drawings, Dalí turned to the oldest process for reproducing photographic images for printing: heliogravure. Similar to engraving, the method is time consuming and costly. Each heliogravure is printed by hand and considered an original” (Catherine Nichols, Alice’s Wonderland: a Visual Journey through Lewis Carroll’s Mad, Mad World, 2014, p. 28).

(DALI, Salvador.) CARROLL, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1969. Peter Harrington Rare Books.