CARROLL Lewis Rhyme ? and Reason ?

First Edition of this a collection of 17 poems, including reprints of Phantasmagoria and the Hunting of the Snark, as well as six published for the first time.

A fine copy with this inscription in purple ink :

Mrs Dyer
with very kind regards
 from the Author
 Dec 7/83

Mr and Mrs Dyer hosted Lewis Carroll at 7 Lushington Road in the seaside resort of Eastbourne during his summer holidays for 22 years. The author maintained regular correspondence with them, often based on practical details. However, over the years Carroll seems to have developed a genuine friendship with the couple, particularly with Mrs Dyer.

This copy is one of the first to have been signed. On 6 December 1883, Lewis Carroll sent out the first 11 copies, before writing in his diary the following day that he had ‘Sent off more than 40 more’ (The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, 1971, p.422). Our copy, dated the 7th, is therefore one of the first 51 to bear an inscription

In addition, Carroll had already signed a copy of Through the Looking Glass for the couple in 1877.

Finally, Lewis Carroll mentioned in his diary a lovely day spent in the company of Mrs Dyer and her daughter on 11 February 1887. : « Then to Mrs. Dyer-Edwards (whom I met at the F. Holidays), and saw her and her charming little girl Noelle, aged 8. We lunched there, and then went to the Alice play” (The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, 1971, p. 448)

The very next day, Carroll wrote to Mrs Dyer “Will you kindly tell me if there is any one of my books (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, Rhyme? and Reason?, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground) that Noel does not, and would like to, possess? Or perhaps she might like the first in French? I do not (as is popularly supposed of me) take a fancy to all children, and instantly: I fear I take dislikes to some):  but I did take a fancy to your little daughter – and I hope we may grow to be friends. Believe me always Yours wry truly, L. Dodgson” (The selected letters of Lewis Carroll, 1982, p.167).

The book is illustrated with 74 engravings (65 by Arthur B. Frost and 9 by Henry Holiday). It also contains, on page 143, the famous ‘Ocean-chart’ or ‘Bellman map’, a map that is entirely blank except for a few random annotations in the margins: Equator, Equinox, South Pole, Zenith, Nadir, Torrid Zone, etc. Already published in The Hunting of the Snark in 1876, it appeared here in the eponymous section. The inclusion of this joke as an illustration was undoubtedly Carroll’s own idea.

The book block is slightly detached from the binding, and the title and frontispiece slightly brown. However, the copy is in very good condition in terms of binding, text and illustrations.