Book News
Alice’s “Alice” sells for $115,000.
A rare edition of “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, given to the real Alice, has sold for $115,000 at auction.
The copy belonged to 10-year-old Alice Liddell, the Oxford don’s inspiration for the fictional Alice.
Another first edition sold for $40,000. The books were sold by former football star and children’s books collector Pat McInally.
A signed letted from Carroll, dated July 10, 1890, went for $2,000.
Alice Liddell was the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch College, Oxford, while Carroll was there as the professor of maths. He used many of his experiences there as inspiration for “Alice in Wonderland.”
McInally, who played for the Cincinnati Bengals in the ’70s and ’80s, said, “I think it is the most important children’s book ever written . . . so finding a book given to Alice by Lewis Carroll was really exciting.”
He said he wanted to sell the book to allow him to add to other parts of his collection. “My main collection has been the Winnie-the-Pooh books,” he said.
First Lines
Broken Jewel, by David L. Robbins
Remy Tuck had not seen his own reflection in three weeks. He’d lost his shaving mirror in a poker game to a man with jaundice. Remy hadn’t tried to win the mirror back. Lately, he played only for food.
He sat under a giant dao tree near the barbed wire, rolling dice on a plank. The faces of the internees around him told him enough of what he must look like. Scooped-eyed and hollow-cheeked, three of them bet with Remy for the prize of an egg, while the rest read or dozed. One of the gamblers, a former mechanic for Pan Am, tipped his sharp chin up away from their game. Remy stopped rattling the dice to gaze through the dao’s branches into the dispersing mist of a warm December morning. The far-off hum of an American plane — the Japanese had no presence anymore in the Philippine sky — added its burr to the calls of birds and insects in the scrub and bamboo inside the camp, the jungle outside it. Remy put down the dice. The whine of the airplane shifted to a higher tone. Something dived their way.
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