Alice in Wonderland : Mallams Auction Catalogue 2017 Schuster Collection

Mallams Auction Sale Catalogue, Feb 2017
The Oxford Authors Sale, Including the Thomas and Greta Schuster 'Alice in Wonderland' Collection

A very good copy packed with examples of Alice books and memorablia . . a great reference for any 'Alice' collector

For sale we have an 84-page Mallams colour catalogue for a remarkable collection of over 3000 Alice in Wonderland books and memorabilia, among the largest in the world, went on sale at Mallams auctioneers in Oxford on 8th of February, 2017. The ‘Oxford Authors Sale’ included more than 3,000 Alice items acquired across a 25-year collecting odyssey by the late Thomas Schuster and his wife Greta.

Thomas E Schuster, who died in 2013, aged 76, was an international antiquarian books and prints dealer based in Maddox Street in Mayfair, London. His interest in English children’s literature was first ignited by a client in Japan and he became a recognised expert in the works of Kate Greenaway, Beatrix Potter and the Enid Blyton character ‘Noddy’. He published the Kate Greenaway catalogue raisonne in 1986.

But it was the Victorian writer, photographer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, who proved a lasting passion for both Thomas Schuster and his wife. Buying at auction, at antique fairs at home and abroad, and through specialist dealers, Alice in Wonderland was the couple’s shared hobby for more than a quarter century.

Highlights from the massive collection (sold in 360 lots) had been exhibited publicly on two previous occasions: at the Schuster gallery in the late 1990s and at the Tate Modern Liverpool in 2012, as part of an Alice in Wonderland exhibition that later moved to Italy and Germany. However, Mallams’ sale provided the first opportunity to view the collection in its entirety – the myriad books, porcelain, artwork, posters, toys, dolls and ephemera that have surrounded the cult of Alice since the earliest years. They range from the rare and academically important to the downright bizarre.

Greta Schuster and son Chris chose to sell the collection in Oxford for its intimate associations with the Alice story. It was famously during a boat trip on the Thames in 1862 that Christ Church College don Charles Dodgson first entertained the 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters with the tale of a girl who fell down a rabbit hole into a world called Wonderland.

(location : antique childrens box)