Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

S$345.00

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

S$345.00

Title: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Author: Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel (illus)
Publisher: Oxford University Press/The Franklin Mint, 1980/1981 (Oxford Library of the World’s Great Books series, limited edition).Impossibly rare and out of print.
Condition: Hardcover. Very minor scratches to edge of text block. Otherwise flawless. Looks like it was never read.

SKU: alice-oxford-franklin Categories: , , Tag:

This book features:

  • Full top-grade leather binding
  • Genuine 22k gold gilt to all edges, front design, spine, and back
  • Marbled endsheets
  • Satin bookmark, sewn-in
  • Hubbed spine with raised bands
  • Smyth-sewn binding for durability
  • Premium acid-neutral archival paper that will not yellow

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AND FRANKLIN MINT: One Brief, Shining Moment

Franklin even had a brief, shining liaison with Oxford University Press in the early 1980s that produced astonishing dual-tone ‘leather upon leather’, or deep image-embossed bindings that, remarkably, out-classed even ‘early Franklin’!

FRANKLIN LIBRARY’S FINEST

The Franklin Library, the publishing division of The Franklin Mint, was of course, at one time, the nation’s largest publisher of great books in fine bindings. Founded in 1973, it ceased publishing in 2000. Its early editions ~ fully bound in genuine premium-grade, hand-cut leather, selected for quality of grain and texture ~ were designed and bound by The Sloves Organization, Ltd., an affiliate of the mint, whose bindery was one of the few in the world devoted exclusively to the crafting of fine leather books.

Printed from 1981 to 1985,* the Oxford/Franklin volumes are gorgeous ~ absolutely stunning in their production qualities. Oxford University Press, in fact, specially chose the publishing division of The Franklin Mint to design and produce its World’s Great Books series because of Franklin’s unsurpassed skill in achieving a premium-quality product: each Oxford book must also be ‘a wonder’ in the finest of bookbinding traditions and, if possible, exceed Franklin’s high standard. By that prestigious election, Franklin thus was also doubly honored and formally recognized for the awesome reputation it had achieved in the publishing world throughout the decade of the 1970s.

It is because of that ‘brief, shining moment’ in publication history that these fine classic Oxford/Franklin editions generally surpass anything else ever produced either before or after that time by any of today’s renowned publishing giants. Relatively few titles in the multi-edition Great Books series were given the fabulous full-leather treatment; most were quarter-bound volumes ~ very lovely indeed by the lights of their own publication merits ~ but still unable to boast the same ‘Rolls Royce’ elegance of their full-leather counterparts.

About Alice in Wonderland:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world (Wonderland) populated by peculiar creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, and its narrative course and structure have been enormously influential, especially in the fantasy genre.

(from wikipedia).