New book: “Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The English Language Editions of the Four Alice Books Published Worldwide”

In 2015, after years of work and with contributions from many Carrollians (including me), the three volume publication “Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translations of Lewis Carroll’s Masterpiece” was published: an overview of all translations of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there” ever published around the world, supplemented with various interesting essays about the works and their translations. A very useful reference work and a wonderful example of what a community can achieve.

Since visitors of my website regularly contact me asking whether I can tell them more about an old edition of an ‘Alice’ book that they have in their possession, I then wondered whether an overview of all English-language editions in the world might also exist. So I asked Jon Lindseth, the project leader of “Alice in a World of Wonderlands”, if he was aware of the existence of such a list. My question apparently stimulated him, because instead of just answering “No, there isn’t one”, he decided to turn this into another project! To make not only an inventory of all English editions of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there”, but also of “Alice’s Adventures under Ground” and “The Nursery ‘Alice’”. And I was assigned the task of cataloging all the English-language editions of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” that had been released in all non-English-speaking countries of the world.

The project took 7 years, but I’m happy and honoured to now be able to present to you: the two volumes of “Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The English Language Editions of the Four Alice Books Published Worldwide”!

The two volumes of “Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The English Language Editions of the Four Alice Books Published Worldwide”

The first volume contains several essays on the publication background of the books, with very useful information on, for example, the distinction between different old editions and their specific physical and textual features, but also overviews of how many surviving copies of the most important first editions are known and where in the world they can be found, essays on alternative illustrations, and pieces about important people in the Carroll world.

The contents of volume 1

Part of an essay

The second volume contains the bibliographies, with a total of no less than 4,400 inventoried editions!

The contents of volume 2

Part of the bibliography

If you are interested in obtaining “Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The English Language Editions of the Four Alice Books Published Worldwide”, you can purchase it in various forms:

1. As a deluxe edition (as shown in my photos). Price: $250 for both volumes combined. Don’t wait too long, because it is a limited edition of only 100 copies. You can order it by sending an email to the publisher: [email protected].
2. As a standard edition: available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The price is $102.99 for volume 1 and $42.99 for volume 2.
   
3. As an eBook: available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Google Books and Smashwords. (Not yet available at the time of publication of this blogpost.)

The intention is to also make available a digital database of both these volumes and the previous three in the “Alice in a World of Wonderland” series, to make all the data more accessible as well as much easier to update. I don’t know when this database will be ready; it will probably take another couple of years. But in my opinion it is certainly worth all the effort, because this bibliography with the essays provides a wonderful reference work that will hopefully be useful to many generations of Carrollians and other literary interested people after us. So I am immensely proud to have been the initiator of the project and a contributor to it!

All 5 volumes of “Alice in a World of Wonderland”