Alice's Adventures in Wonderland By Lewis Carroll. Illustrated by John Tenniel.

New York: Hurst & Company, Publishers, n.d., [ca. 1900]. New Edition. 16mo, 6" tall. Blue cloth, front board and spine stamped in white with a decorative border; gilt pictorial oval to front board. 204 pp. Illustrated throughout with the original Tenniel illustrations.

Condition: Good. Blue cloth worn along the edges, corners, and spine tips, with modest fraying and fading; white stamping to spine largely faded away; scattered spotting to cloth. Two numerals in pink ink to the text block edges, and one to the front free endpaper; no other markings noted. Light foxing to the text block edge; a few dog-eared leaves and signs of handling. Text with overprinting and blurring in places, consistent with a late pull from well-used printing plates. Text block soft, but without cracking or loose pages. Collates complete apart from the frontispiece, which appears to be lacking as issued rather than removed; no stub or other evidence of removal. A second surviving copy sharing this binding's distinctive scrollwork border and identical "New Edition" title page has been located, also lacking a frontispiece — suggestive, though not conclusive on a sample of two, that this particular binding/printing state may have been issued without one, though other Hurst & Co editions were issued with the frontispiece.

Significance: An uncommon Hurst & Co. binding variant of the Tenniel-illustrated Alice, distinguished by a pictorial gilt oval on the front board depicting a young woman in fashionable Victorian dress — a strikingly atypical visual take on the title character. Hurst issued this text across numerous distinct undated bindings over several decades using recycled printing plates; this exact binding does not appear to be documented in standard online sources.