Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Through a Looking Glass Darkly

Through a Looking Glass Darkly is a re-imagining of Lewis Carroll's work by rare book dealer Jake Fior, who specialises in 'Alice' material, which draws on the supernatural and mystical elements in Carroll's imagination. The Victorian author's library, Fior notes, included shelves of books on magic and speculative thought. 

This variation on the book takes an older version of Alice through an occult landscape involving elements from the history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 

The new volume also explores the strange synchronicities and discoveries encountered during the re-creation of the book. 

The book includes unpublished illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, whose previously unknown 'Alice' chess-board Jake Fior found, and new coloured versions by Kate Hepburn of the classic Alice artwork.

It is available in a special signed edition limited to 125 copies, bound in midnight-blue silk cloth with the top edge hand decorated in silver and with certain pages perfumed by Roja Dove. There is also a trade edition. 

(Mark Valentine)

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