The mouse’s tail
by DN
This morning I was at Oxford University Press for some meetings and got chatting with the archivist who showed me some of the things they were getting ready for an exhibition on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) had originally asked OUP to handle the book and OUP printed 2000 copies of the book in 1865. But the illustrator, John Tenniel complained about the quality of the printing and these copies were held back - becoming ‘the suppressed edition’ – and Macmillan eventually published the book. OUP still has some of the original plates, including the plate for the famous ‘mouse tail’ text. I got to see the mouse tail plate today. I’m kicking myself now, but I felt it would a geeky step too far to take a photo under the watchful stare of the archivist. So here’s the next best thing – a picture of the ‘mouse tail’. Mad skillz by the compositors. Try doing THIS on a kindle.
[...] Shop, the Thames and even Oxford University Press where the original printing plate of the mouse’s tail is [...]