Future Library chooses second author

The 100-year art project is gaining momentum, as it chose its author of 2016 — David Mitchell, author of the critically acclaimed novel, Cloud Atlas.

Scottish artist Katie Paterson launched the Future Library for the city of Oslo in the summer of 2014. It is a public art work that aims to collect one original story by a popular writer every year until 2114, and to share them with the world only then. A thousand trees have been planted in Nordmarka, a forest just outside Oslo, which will supply paper for this special anthology of books to be printed in one hundred years time. Contributors to Future Library can write whatever they like — poems, short stories, novels or non-fiction — in any language. The only thing asked of them is that they do not speak about their writing, or show it to anyone, and that they deliver one hard copy and one digital copy at the handover ceremony in Oslo. Each author — chosen by a panel of experts and Paterson herself, their names revealed each year — will make the trek to the spot in the forest high above Oslo, where they will surrender their manuscript in a short ceremony.

David Mitchell, a regular contender for the Man Booker prize, knows the pain of one’s novels being picked over by the critics. So it’s something of a relief, says the British author, that his latest work won’t be seen by anyone until 2114. He is the second author to contribute to the project, after Margaret Atwood, who last year handed over the manuscript of a text called Scribbler Moon. His manuscript will be sealed and placed alongside Atwood’s in a wood-lined room in Oslo’s new public library, which will open in 2019.

Alice in Wonderland set for auction

Christie’s, the auction house that plans to auction an 1865 edition of Alice in Wonderland on 16 June claims the book is “in its true original state, with the text and binding as they were when the book was first produced”, also adding that “no other copy in the original binding in this condition exists in private hands”. Sixteen of the known copies are in institutional libraries, and six of them are in personal collections.

The one-of-a-kind, first edition of Alice in Wonderland is due to be auctioned in New York, where it is anticipated to fetch between $2m and $3m. It is one of the only 22 known copies in existence, from the lot that the author, Lewis Carroll, withdrew the entire print run of in 1865. Two thousand copies of the first edition of Carroll’s classic children’s story were printed in June 1865. Macmillan & Co, the publishing house, was planning to release it on 4 July, and sent 50 advance copies to the author for him to give away, which he did. But shortly afterwards, the book’s illustrator, John Tenniel, told Carroll that he was “entirely dissatisfied with the printing of the pictures”. Carroll, being the perfectionist that he was, recalled the print run, and asked for the advance copies he had sent out to be returned.

The book has endured through the ages as one of the most beloved stories in children’s literature. Carroll scholar Morton. N. Cohen says that the “inferior” quality first editions of Alice in Wonderland have become “so choice”, that collectors “would trade whole segments of their libraries for a single copy of the ‘first’ Alice; bibliographers dream of uncovering an unrecorded copy; and literary chroniclers are at a loss to explain how, even in the heyday of Victorian publishing, such extravagant decisions could be made over a single children’s book as were made over this one.”

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 5th, 2016