John Tenniel's illustration for an early edition: Everything and nothing have changed.
In time, the LCSNA evolved into a more complex organism: a butterfly that has turned into a caterpillar. Where once it was the collectible book that was the focus, it is now the content that is in the cross-hairs and its language is plumbed and parsed to illuminate and elucidate all manner of events within the book and without. Think of it as Tarot cards for the intellectually capable.
This transition seems to precisely suit Mark, the son and sun of this evolving galactic enterprise who day and night edits the Knight Letter, the semi-annual journal of the LCSNA, and also serves as its vice president.
It is a sprawling thing that would leave Dodgson himself bemused about the enthusiasm and intensity which emanates from the journal pages like reflected heat on macadam in July. The most recent issue contains two principal parts: “The Rectory Umbrella” and “Mischasch” and beneath their extended canopies nineteen articles and many items of diverse lengths present a panoply of wisdom, information, direction, dissection and announcements and the touch of the whimsy that Mark brings to this endeavor. For the hare-brained there is something for everyone. The latest issue, but one which measures a stout 44 pages all in, is reported pregnant with ambitions and articles that will carry the impending one to the printer’s cosmic limit – 56 pages, the most that the present binding arrangements will tolerate without busting its buttons.
For those who find the written word insufficient, there are two LCSNA conferences staged each year at least six unicorn leaps apart to allow Carrollinians on both coasts their chance to dissect, resurrect and hypothesize in person.
A few years ago, Sandor gifted his extraordinary collection of Carrolliana to Mark. We find today in Mark’s home a cosmic Alice assemblage in a very comfortable environment where the collection breaths easily and the residents must hold theirs, for this material lives in a constant state of impending birth. If the collection could speak, you would expect it to say, “Get out! I need more room.” And it would be true.
For collecting Alice is different than collecting, say, a period or subject in American history. It’s true that interpretations change but they tend to change slowly and the flow of new material on most subjects is both moderate and not necessarily of interest to the collector of the early or original materials. Alice, by comparison, is published in many languages and for some collectors, accumulating the book in these many languages and in all the editions of these various languages is a collecting pursuit.
Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000
![Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/e47bb03e-3f3d-4f68-9e79-b0b2739ca87c.jpg "<b>Dominic Winter, Apr. 9:</b> Bible [English]. [<i>The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament,</i> 1562]. £3,000-5,000")
