Description

“I wrote to Macmillan to suggest a new idea: a ‘Nursery Edition’ of Alice with pictures printed in.”
– Lewis Carroll’s diary, 15th February 1881

The Nursery Alice, originally published by Macmillan & Co. in 1890, was the very first colour edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was intended, wrote Carroll, “to be read by Children aged from Nought to Five. To be read? Nay, not so! Say rather to be thumbed, to be cooed over, to be dogs’-eared, to be rumpled, to be kissed . . .”

With this new, younger readership in mind, Carroll rewrote Alice himself, simplifying and abridging the original text, while Sir John Tenniel redrew, enlarged and coloured twenty of his iconic illustrations (with Alice in a yellow dress to reflect the 1890s craze for yellow!). The resulting book is a delightfully engaging experience; readers prompted to interact not only with the story but also with the images and even the physical book itself, in a way that is thoroughly modern.

Gloriously reproduced by Macmillan, the original publishers of both Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, this edition retains every word of the original The Nursery Alice and restores the exquisite delicacy of Tenniel’s artwork – lost in reproductions across the decades – along with the delightful cover artwork by Emily Gertrude Thomson. This gem of a book is the perfect introduction to Alice, and a delight for child and adult readers alike.