(Children's Literature, Poetry, Illustrated Books) CARROLL, Lewis. THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK AND OTHER POEMS AND VERSES. Illustrated by Peter Newell.
New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1903. FIRST EDITION, thus. 8vo - 9" x 6". xiii, 248 pp., [40] leaves of plates. Top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed. Publisher's cream-colored paper-covered boards with gilt lettering and decoration to upper cover and spine. Housed in the original publisher's heavy green paper dust jacket with matching gilt lettering and decoration, and the original publisher's printed glassine wrapper. Plain endpapers with light offsetting from wrapper. Illustrated with forty full-page drawings in tint by Peter Newell, with ornamental page borders throughout by Robert Murray Wright.
The physical condition of the book is graded FINE in a VERY GOOD + dust jacket and VERY GOOD + glassine wrapper (utilizing the standard antiquarian book grading scale for works on paper). The paper-covered boards remain bright, clean, and unrubbed, with intact gilt decoration and no fading to the cloth or spine. The original publisher's heavy green paper dust jacket shows minimal shelfwear, featuring a clean split along the upper spine fold extending approximately one-third its length, with uniform sunning across the spine and portions of the panels. The original printed glassine wrapper remains structurally intact with a single horizontal crease and minor fraying along the edges.
The Peter Newell Holiday Editions and Harper's Graphic Craftsmanship
Published as part of Harper & Brothers' prestigious series of holiday editions designed by Peter Newell, this 1903 volume brought a fresh visual interpretation to Lewis Carroll's classic nonsense poem alongside a selection of verse from Rhyme? and Reason?, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and Sylvie and Bruno. Newell's distinctive wash drawings are rendered across forty full-page tinted plates, while Robert Murray Wright's ornamental borders frame the printed text pages throughout, epitomizing American gift book design at the turn of the twentieth century. Harper's production standards for these editions incorporated a layered protective strategy—encasing the decorated board binding within a heavy paper dust jacket and a delicate printed glassine over-wrapper.
Production Fragility, Wrapper Preservation, and Market Scarcity
Because early twentieth-century trade publications were intended for active handling, the light cream paper boards and fragile printed glassine wrappers of the Peter Newell Carroll series were exceptionally vulnerable to soil, tearing, and discarded usage. While copies of the 1903 text block survive in general antiquarian market channels, the simultaneous preservation of both the decorated green paper dust jacket and the original printed glassine wrapper is exceedingly rare.
AN EXCEPTIONALLY PRESERVED COPY FEATURING BOTH THE ORIGINAL PUBLISHER'S DUST JACKET AND EXCEEDINGLY RARE PRINTED GLASSINE WRAPPER, REPRESENTING A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, LEWIS CARROLL, OR AMERICAN BOOK ILLUSTRATION.
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