How many copies were printed in the first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? The answer is 2,000 copies.
Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, initially arranged for Macmillan to publish the book in 1865. The first printing was produced at Oxford's Clarendon Press, with illustrations by John Tenniel. Although publication was planned for July 4, 1865, Tenniel objected to the quality of the illustrations, and Carroll asked Macmillan to withdraw the run.
Most of those 2,000 copies were never sold through ordinary British distribution. Macmillan subsequently produced a larger, reset printing, commonly associated with the 1866 publication date. The withdrawn sheets were partly sold in the United States, where they formed the basis of an early American issue.
A common mix-up is confusing the first printing with the first widely available edition. Collectors generally distinguish the rare suppressed 1865 printing from the commercially distributed edition dated 1866. Only a small number of the original 1865 copies are known to survive, making them exceptionally valuable.