When Alexander met Alice

Lewis Carroll and the House of Macmillan

In the autumn of 1863, Thomas Combe, who supervised the printing works at the Oxford University Press, invited his new friend, the publisher Alexander Macmillan, to supper at his house. He wanted to introduce him to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a young mathematics don from Christ Church College. Dodgson had spent the previous year working on a manuscript of a story for children and was paying Combe £140 to print 2,000 copies of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on the University presses. He commissioned illustrations, also at his own expense, from John Tenniel, the famous Punch cartoonist, and now he arranged for the books to be distributed by Macmillan, on 10 per cent commission.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in 1832, the eldest son of a Cheshire cleric, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. By his mid-thirties he had established himself as a senior member of the academic staff at Christ Church, and was a formidable scholar in mathematics. Yet his fame has been built on what he achieved under the ‘Lewis Carroll’ pseudonym; his second life began when he promised ten-year-old Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of his College, to write down a story he had made up for her and her sisters one afternoon while rowing them on the Thames. The original manuscript for Alice’s Adventures under Ground, in Dodgson’s own handwriting, is held by the British Library.

Alexander Macmillan, with twenty years’ publishing experience behind him, was happy to oblige and to guide the younger man. He had only just concluded the rather tense negotiations which had led to him being appointed Publisher to the Oxford University Press, and Dean Liddell, Alice’s father, was a man of great importance in the University hierarchy. Alexander held Dodgson’s hand throughout the initial printing contract with Combe, advising on details such as the weight of the paper, the dimensions of the book, the list of the recipients for review copies, even the title. In October 1864 he wrote to Dodgson: ‘I think all the experiments in the title which you propose will be most effectively made in the sheet by Mr Combe. You will never be able to judge absolutely till you see it there. I should certainly incline to put the dedication in one size smaller type . . .’ He helped Dodgson with the design of the pages and the choice of typescript: Dodgson wanted the book to be bound in the same smooth cloth as Kingsley’s The Water Babies, but in a nice bright red to attract children, and Macmillan was happy to point him towards the recently published The Children’s Garland as an example.

By February 1865 Macmillan was becoming nervous that Combe might not be up to the job: ‘We agreed if you remember that the book should be the same size as Kingsley’s Water Babies . . . if Mr Combe has any doubt about it he can easily borrow a copy . . . I hope he won’t make any mistake about this, it is perfectly simple . . . paper of 60lb weight would be the thing.’

In May he wrote again:

I quite agree with you that a slight increase of the outer and diminution of the inner margin will be an improvement . . . you had better measure it and not with your eye and mark it with a pen or pencil so that no mistake can occur. When this is done I think we can go ahead. The devices [engravings to go on the cover] are being cut. But they are much more elaborate than is usual with cloth blocks and I fear will take some time. Had you been content with puss, we could have done it quicker. The young lady and all her surroundings will take some time and labour.

By this point Dodgson had already missed the Easter publishing season, but at the end of June 1865 Combe sent the first sheets to Macmillan for binding, and on 15 July the author was at Macmillan’s offices signing early hand-bound copies for despatch to his friends. But on 19 July, Tenniel, who had a reputation to maintain, saw a copy of the book and complained to Dodgson about the reproduction of his illustrations. In a panic, Dodgson asked Macmillan to get a quotation for printing the whole thing again, this time from Macmillan’s preferred printer, Richard Clay in Cambridge. Combe had been paid £140; Clay wanted £240. Even though this new outlay represented a very significant financial setback for Dodgson, who was after all bearing all the costs himself, he pressed on, and in November 1865 he received the first bound copies from Macmillan, just in time for Christmas.

Sales crept steadily upwards; in August 1866 Macmillan ordered another 3,000 copies, by February 1867 they had sold more than 6,000. At one point they considered selling the flawed Oxford copies for waste paper, but in the end, Macmillan did a deal and nearly all 2,000 of them were despatched to Appletons in New York. Dodgson was not so interested in the book’s reception among the Americans. (If Tenniel had any opinions on the subject, they were not recorded.) Today, the surviving copies of the Oxford edition sell for $50,000 or more.

This was the beginning of an extraordinarily fruitful publishing relationship which lasted through to Dodgson’s death in 1898 – there are over two thousand letters in existence between the author and the firm, with many more missing. It was also extremely unusual, in that throughout his life, Dodgson retained the copyright of his works, paid the expenses of printing and took all the publishing risk: Macmillan received the same 10 per cent commission on every book sold. By 1869, Alice had been through five editions and has never been out of print. Translations into French and German, published in 1869, marked Macmillan’s first venture into European ‘own language’ markets . Alexander had originally advised Dodgson to find a foreign publisher for these editions, but the author persuaded him to publish under the Macmillan name. In 1871, when Macmillan published Through the Looking-Glass, they sold 9,000 copies in two weeks.

The 1889 Macmillan & Co Catalogue lists over a dozen children’s books by Lewis Carroll, as well as six mathematical textbooks published under the author’s real name. Dodgson’s relationship with the firm was not without its ups and downs, but Alexander took all his letters and complaints in his stride. He may have been more demanding than any other of Macmillan’s authors, but he was also the client and picking up the bills, and Alexander recognized that both men were driven by the same goal of perfection in publishing, which took time and endless patience. However, the publisher was perfectly capable of giving as good as he got, being firm when he needed to be and offering valuable counsel. When Dodgson asked if he should spend more money on promotion, Alexander advised against it: ‘Each copy of your book that is sold is an advertisement.’

Alexander had accommodated many of Dodgson’s ideas to connect with his young readers, such as typesetting ‘The Mouse’s Tale’ poem, which appears in the book, in the shape of a tail. He let Dodgson add Easter and Christmas messages as the reprints happened. However, when Dodgson asked whether it was possible to insert a slip into the books requesting all his little girl fans to send in photographs, or ‘cartes’, his publisher put his foot down. Alexander must have been alarmed, if not horrified, at the prospect, but he wrote teasingly:

Did you ever take a shower bath? Or do you remember your first? To appeal to all your young admirers for their photographs! If your shower bath were filled a-top with bricks instead of water it would be about the fate you court. But if you will do it – there is no help for it, and as in duty bound we will help you to the self-immolation. Cartes! I should think so indeed! – cartloads of them. Think of the postmen, open an office for relief at the North Pole and another at the Equator. Ask President Grant, the Emperor of China, the Governor General of India, the whatever do you call him of Melbourne, if they won’t help you. But it’s no use remonstrating with you. I am resigned. I return from Scotland next Monday week. I shall be braced for encountering the awful idea.

Dodgson got the message and dropped the plan. And when in 1871 he asked Macmillan what he thought about delaying the publication of Through the Looking-Glass until after Christmas, to be sure of receiving Tenniel’s illustrations in plenty of time, Alexander replied:

What do I think! That your proposal is worse than the cruellest ogre ever conceived in darkest and most malignant moods. What do I think! Why half the children will be laid up with pure vexation and anguish of spirit. Plum pudding of the delicatest, toys the most elaborate, will have no charm. Darkness will come over all hearths, gloom will hover over the brightest board. Don’t think of it for a moment. The book must come out for Christmas, or I don’t know what will be the consequence.

Alexander got his way: although the first edition is marked 1872, but the copies were flying off the press well before Christmas.

The two men became good friends. Dodgson became well known to the whole Macmillan family; he entertained Macmillan in his rooms in Oxford, he stayed with him in Tooting, he dined at the Garrick with Alexander and his son George and went to the theatre with them. At times he asked Alexander to gauge his children’s opinion on items of literary style. However, there may have been some intentional distance kept – although Dodgson was a keen photographer of children, especially small girls, Alexander’s seem to be the only boys and girls in his social circle that he did not photograph, not even little Mary (born in 1874).

Dodgson - polishing his camera lens?

Dodgson’s relationship with the firm went far beyond what was normal for an author: Alexander was happy to get his clerks to run London errands for Dodgson, such as buying his theatre tickets for him; copying out all the speeches from Alice so that they could be registered as dramas; even replying to the correspondence which arrived in Bedford Street addressed to Lewis Carroll. In return, Dodgson was happy to pay tribute to the service he received from Macmillan – at one point when he was embroiled in public controversy over the profits being made by the retailers, he wrote:

The publisher contributes about as much as the bookseller in time and bodily labour, but in mental toil and trouble a great deal more. I speak, with some personal knowledge of the matter, having myself, for some twenty years, inflicted on that most patient and painstaking firm, Messrs. Macmillan and Co., about as much wear and worry as ever publishers have lived through. The day when they undertake a book for me is a dies nefastus [an unlucky day] for them. From that day till the book is out – an interval of some two or three years on an average – there is no pause in “the pelting of the pitiless storm” of directions and questions on every conceivable detail. To say that every question gets a courteous and thoughtful reply – that they are still outside a lunatic asylum – and that they still regard me with some degree of charity – is to speak volumes in praise of their good temper and of their health, bodily and mental.

And when quarrels arose - as one frequently finds

Quarrels will, spite of every endeavour -

The song of the Jubjub recurred to their minds,

And cemented their friendship for ever! ?

From ‘The Hunting of the Snark’

(With thanks to Morton N Cohen from whom I borrowed this quotation, and who produced so much fine work on the Macmillan-Carroll correspondence).

This is all well known publishing history, but to me there is a gaping hole in the story, which is what Alexander Macmillan thought of Dodgson’s little tale. In all the surviving letters discussing typeface and weight of paper, the publisher never offers an opinion or thought about this extraordinary text itself. This was a man who had detailed comments and wise advice for every literary author he published. Sadly, the very earliest letters between the two men do not seem to have survived, so we cannot read Alexander’s initial reaction to Alice. And he was not being paid to edit the copy, just to sell it. Could it be that Macmillan was indifferent to the book, that it was just one more rather time-consuming project to be handled, at the same time that he was taking on the new role in Oxford; constructing new business premises in Bedford Street, London; relocating a very large family from Cambridge to Tooting; and dealing with the far more complex day to day task of selecting, commissioning and editing the books that would build the Macmillan catalogue?

Thomas Combe’s instinct that this was the man for Dodgson, was a sound one. If you want a job done, ask a busy person. After all, although Macmillan was Publisher to the Learned Press, as Oxford referred to its output of academic and classical texts, he was also the man who had coaxed Goblin Market out of a very shy Christina Rossetti, and had loved Kingsley’s Water Babies so much that he read the chapters aloud to his children. These were both texts full of nonsense, imagery and illusion. Alice, perhaps more than these others, had always been constructed with children in mind, and in 1863 Macmillan had the perfect target audience sitting in his own drawing room: eight children under the age of twelve.

Whatever Alexander’s initial reaction was to this curious tale from a young Oxford don, it is clear that the two men immediately struck up a rapport that would see them through the best and worst of publishing times, that they shared a goal of perfection in the creation of a book that would last through generations, and that most important of all, they treated their young audience with a respect and understanding unusual among publishers of the day, which in turn brought them fame, fortune and established them as the undisputed kings of children’s literature.