ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, [the suppressed] Third edition, 'Sixtieth Thousand', 1893

WITHDRAWN FROM CIRCULATION BY THE AUTHOR, ONE OF ONLY FOUR KNOWN COPIES.

Original red cloth, gilt-stamped, spine gilt-lettered, gilt edges (spine lightly and evenly sunned and slightly cockled). Complete with the special purple stamp on the title page ‘Presented by the Author for the use of Mechanics’ Institutes…’

The suppressed 60th thousand issue of Through the Looking-Glass, according to Carroll, was riddled with printing production faults. The illustrations were over-printed, the pages badly folded and led to him threatening to terminate his contract with Macmillan. This had already been an issue after the first printing of the 1865 Alice, which was recalled after John Tenniel complained about the quality of the printing. On receiving the first six copies of the 60th thousand issue he wrote a strongly-worded letter to Frederick Macmillan, complaining that: 'the book is worthless ... much as I should regret the having to sever a connection that has now lasted nearly 30 years, I shall feel myself absolutely compelled to do so, unless I can have some assurance that better care shall be taken, in future, to ensure that my books shall be of the best artistic quality attainable for the money' (Letters p. 995).

Only 60 copies of the 60th thousand had gone out when Carroll intervened (diary entry for 21 November 1893; Diary 9 (2005), p.105). He asked Macmillan to destroy the remainder of the edition, but the situation quickly escalated. Having lost faith in both Macmillan and his printer, Carroll stopped the working-off of Sylvie and Bruno Concluded and soon demanded, in a letter to Macmillan, that 'no more Wonderlands are to be printed, from the present electrotypes, till I give permission' (24 November 1893) -- with serious financial consequences for both as potential December sales of Carroll's new book were missed. Carroll's recall left Through the Looking-Glass out of print until 1897. He later changed his mind about destroying the edition and instead favoured rebinding it and distributing it to charitable institutions, as had been done with the suppressed first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

Goodacre notes that "theoretically there should be three variants of the book" (Goodacre, p. 253). The first variant would comprise one of the 60 copies which failed to be returned. The second would comprise one of the 60 copies with the addition of the rubber stamp note on the title page. The third variant comprises the remaining 940 copies with lettering in blind on the front cover noting presentation "for use of Mechanics Institutes, Reading Rooms, etc."

ONLY 4 COPIES are known to exist in the original red cloth: until as recently as 1990 Lovett noted that 'no copies of the 60th thousand in standard binding have been recorded' (p.21). Copies rebound for the Mechanics' Institute were known, but it is only in the last few years that Selwyn Goodacre has been able to trace 4 copies in the original cloth, one of these now lost (Selwyn Goodacre, unpublished census). Williams, Madan, Green and Crutch 84b; Lovett 15a; Selwyn H. Goodacre 'Lewis Carroll's Rejection of the 60th thousand of Through the Looking-Glass', in The Book Collector, Summer 1975, pp. 251-256 [citing only 2 rebound copies]. This is a totally unrecorded copy and thus extremely SCARCE.