The Hunting of the Snark.

London: Macmillan and Co.,, 1876. With the scarce dust jacket First edition of the author's comic verse, which "describes with infinite humour the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature" (Williams, Madan, Green & Crutch). The printed dust jacket is one of the earliest recorded examples and of importance in the history of jacket development. This copy might be from an early batch for export. It lacks the usual binder's label on the rear endpaper but includes a label laid down to the front pastedown for the publishing firm of Solomons and Chapman, Washington, DC. Williams, Madan, Green & Crutch record the first American edition as being published by Osgood in Boston in 1876. Newspaper reviews of the book in the US date from October 1876 and cite Osgood as the publisher. It was Dodgson who suggested to his publisher that the title of his new book should be printed on the spine of the "paper wrapper" so that the book "can stand in bookstalls without being taken out of paper, and so can be kept in cleaner and more saleable condition". Having thought of this advantage, Dodgson then added that he "should like the same thing done for Alice and the Looking Glass for the future - and even those on hand, which are already wrapped in plain paper" (Tanselle, p. 68). Macmillan embraced the idea and did indeed provide new jackets for existing stocks of the older titles. Considered merely a temporary covering at the point of sale, the paper used for the jacket is inexpensive and uncoated, liable to foxing and wear, and was almost invariably discarded. Rather than repeating the decorative blocking of the front cover, as some 19th-century publishers did, Macmillan printed on the front panel a letterpress title laid out in the style of a title page and, on the back, advertisements for other Lewis Carroll books. Provenance: Douglas C. Ewing (book label to chemise); Richard Manney (bookplate to front pastedown). Octavo. Frontispiece and 8 illustrations by Henry Holiday, with tissue guards. Original buff cloth, spine lettered in black, covers illustrated in black, dark green coated endpapers, all edges gilt. With dust jacket. Housed in custom brown cloth chemise and brown morocco-backed slipcase. Head and foot of spine very slightly bumped, hinges splitting but firm, consistent browning to title page from tissue guard as usual; some minor tears and loss to head and foot of jacket spine, price integral to front panel: a near-fine copy in a near-fine jacket. Williams, Madan, Green & Crutch 115. G. Thomas Tanselle, Book-Jackets. Their History, Forms, and Use, 2011.