Monday, November 14, 2011

This Week's Random Book Fact


I apologize for not post a random fact last week! As most of you know I had some family issues that required my attention. I have however decided to double up for you "Book Fact" lovers this week to make up for it!

A rare first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll raised $1.5m at auction in New York, making this the most valuable children's book ever sold. The book was Carroll's own working copy that he used to prepare the text for a simplified version for younger children. Only 22 copies of the 1865 first edition are known to exist today, 17 of which are in libraries and just five, including the copy just sold, are in private hands.
 



Books used to be sold unbound in quires (gatherings of printed sheets or signatures). If you wanted a bound book you had to buy the quires from the publisher and take them to your favorite bookbinder for binding in your choice of material.


1 comment:

Sherry said...

Thanks for posting this. I had no idea a book could sell for this price at auction