The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
RareCarrollfirsteditiontogo onshow— forjusttwohours
A RARE 150-year-old edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, worth up to £1 million, is to go on display at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh tomorrow — for just two hours.
Lewis Carroll’s classic is one of the bestloved children’s books of all time but only 22 copies of the 1865 first edition are thought to exist after almost the entire run was recalled following complaints by its illustrator John Tenniel.
One survivor, which was Carroll’s working copy, sold at auction in New York 17 years ago for £1m.
Visitors to the National Library of Scotland will be able to see the library’s own copy of this most sought-after edition — bequeathed by the family of a collector from Dundee — but only between 4.30pm and 6.30pm tomorrow, World Book Day.
The edition, which was displayed in 1998 to mark the centenary of Carroll’s death and again briefly in 2011, will be open at the illustrated title page in a special display of rare Alice books to mark the 150th anniversary of the first publication.
The library’s precious copy survived after the recall when Tenniel complained about the quality of the printed illustrations.
Recipients of presentation copies were asked to return them and only a few bound copies have survived.
The library’s copy has the added bonus of being in its original red cloth binding.
Graham Hogg, the library’s rare books curator, said: “The story of Alice has delighted generations of children and we are very pleased to be able to show people where it all started by displaying a copy of the first ever printing of the book.
“The copy we have belonged to a wealthy collector named Hugh Sharp, who was a jute merchant from Dundee and died in a train crash in 1937.
“He bought it from a London bookseller, who paid £945 for it at auction in 1936, which was an enormous sum then.
“Sharp is likely to have paid £1,000 or more as he was collecting first editions of landmark publications in English literature.
“After his death Sharp’s family bequeathed his collection to the National Library of Scotland in 1938.
“The Hugh Sharp Collection is now one of our most important special collections.”
Born in 1897, Sharp inherited Hill of Tarvit — a mansion near Cupar in Fife, now run by the NationalTrust for Scotland — in 1932.
Sharp, who had served with distinction during the First World War, was fascinated by rare books and botanical specimens.
In 1937 he was travelling by rail to meet his fiancée Mabel Hogarth in Glasgow. He was one of 35 people killed when the Edinburgh to Glasgow express collided with a stationary train at Castlecary.
The house and the family’s collection was left to the National Trust for Scotland and Sharp’s book collection was presented to the National Library of Scotland.
Mr Hogg said the rare Carroll first edition was one of the library’s “treasures”.
He added: “We don’t like to take it out too often for security reasons and also because of possible light damage.
“Rather than have it in the middle of the day when a lot of people are at work, we have decided on a short window of two hours later in the afternoon.”