1915 · Boston/Toronto
by Schnittkind, Henry T[homas]
Boston/Toronto: Richard G. Badger/The Copp Clark Co., Limited, 1915. Very good +. 7½” x 5 1/8”. Red cloth over boards, dust jacket. Pp. 95, [1, publisher's ad]. Book very good plus: one small scuff to front board; the occasional bit of thumb-soiling or minute corner crease. Jacket good: moderately chipped, foxed and dust soiled.
This is a rare political parody of Alice in Wonderland, published by a socialist-leaning Boston press in 1915.
Henry Thomas Schnittkind, who also wrote under the pen name Henry Thomas, was born in the Russian Empire (now Lithuania) in 1886 and emigrated to New York with his family at the age of ten. He earned a BA, MA and PhD from Harvard between 1909 and 1913, and wrote prolifically on all manner of subjects from mathematics and politics to biographies and philosophy. This book, seemingly his first, is a radical reworking of the beloved Alice in Wonderland story, with a strong socialist and pro-women's suffrage bent.
In this tale's version, Alice is eight years old and “the most beautiful child in the town . . . Her father was a rich landlord, and . . . the nurse always told her that poor people who cannot buy a house for themselves are lazy and good-for-nothing.” Alice gradually learns compassion over a series of dream adventures; in one chapter, after being scolded for playing with poor children, she is visited by the “American Eagle” and shown a land “in which one man makes money out of the life and the happiness of others.” When she asks how the misery can be remedied, the eagle tells her of the “brave people” who “fight alone against the whole world . . . They want all men to be Comrades, and they are trying to make a world where there will be no grindstones to grind money out of the laughter and life of men and women and children.” Alice grows up over the course of the narrative, ending it as a married woman with a child of her own and a thoroughly egalitarian frame of mind.
The book features a publisher's ad at the rear offering “Important Radical Books” such as The ABC of Socialism, Morris Rosenfeld's Songs of Labor and Letters from Prison by Bouck White, “Pastor of the Church of the Social Revolution.”
A rare satirical take on the classic Alice in Wonderland tale. OCLC shows one holding. (Inventory #: 8728)
This is a rare political parody of Alice in Wonderland, published by a socialist-leaning Boston press in 1915.
Henry Thomas Schnittkind, who also wrote under the pen name Henry Thomas, was born in the Russian Empire (now Lithuania) in 1886 and emigrated to New York with his family at the age of ten. He earned a BA, MA and PhD from Harvard between 1909 and 1913, and wrote prolifically on all manner of subjects from mathematics and politics to biographies and philosophy. This book, seemingly his first, is a radical reworking of the beloved Alice in Wonderland story, with a strong socialist and pro-women's suffrage bent.
In this tale's version, Alice is eight years old and “the most beautiful child in the town . . . Her father was a rich landlord, and . . . the nurse always told her that poor people who cannot buy a house for themselves are lazy and good-for-nothing.” Alice gradually learns compassion over a series of dream adventures; in one chapter, after being scolded for playing with poor children, she is visited by the “American Eagle” and shown a land “in which one man makes money out of the life and the happiness of others.” When she asks how the misery can be remedied, the eagle tells her of the “brave people” who “fight alone against the whole world . . . They want all men to be Comrades, and they are trying to make a world where there will be no grindstones to grind money out of the laughter and life of men and women and children.” Alice grows up over the course of the narrative, ending it as a married woman with a child of her own and a thoroughly egalitarian frame of mind.
The book features a publisher's ad at the rear offering “Important Radical Books” such as The ABC of Socialism, Morris Rosenfeld's Songs of Labor and Letters from Prison by Bouck White, “Pastor of the Church of the Social Revolution.”
A rare satirical take on the classic Alice in Wonderland tale. OCLC shows one holding. (Inventory #: 8728)
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