Highlights of the Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll Collection

Alexandra ‘Xie’ Kitchin (1864-1925) was a child-friend and a favourite photographic subject of Carroll.  She was the daughter of the Reverend George William Kitchin (1827–1912), who was Carroll's colleague at Christ Church, Oxford, and later became Dean of Winchester and then of Durham, and his wife, Alice Maud Taylor. Carroll photographed Xie around fifty times, from age four until just before her sixteenth birthday. 

Carroll is considered one of the best amateur photographers of his time, particularly for his images of children.  He also photographed friends, family, fellow scholars, and noted figures of his day.

Carroll was a respected mathematician and logician and was known for an ability to explain difficult mathematical concepts in terms that were easy to understand.  He developed logic puzzles for the amusement of his siblings (even as adults) and his many child pen friends.  Carroll advertised Symbolic Logic (first published in 1896) as “a fascinating mental recreation for the young”. 

Carroll sent these galley proofs to May Barber, whom he had met when he taught at her mother’s boarding school in 1894.

The 1866 edition is the unofficial second edition, but the official first edition of the book, as the 1865 edition was recalled as Tenniel was unhappy with the quality. It was set by Richard Clay and published by Macmillan & Co. in time for the 1865 Christmas market. 

The Brothers Dalziel, master engravers, were commissioned to engrave the boxwood blocks on which Tenniel had made his drawings. However, the engraved blocks could not withstand commercial printing of the volume of books required, and so instead they served as the masters from which electrotype copies were made. 

Carroll insisted that the illustrations for all his books be printed using electrotypes.

The sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland appeared in late 1871, dated, as was common practice for Christmas books, the following year. Though initially reluctant, John Tenniel again provided the illustrations. This copy bears an inscription from Tenniel, using his characteristic monogram, and a pencil reproduction of the illustration of Alice wearing her golden crown.

A number of copies of early editions and translations of the Alice books survive with the signature of the original Alice in later life, by this time Alice Hargreaves, widow of Reginald and chatelaine of Cuffnells, a large house in the New Forest. Many of these signatures are dated 1932, in which year she paid a much-publicised visit to New York with her son Caryl. Alice died two years later, in 1934, at the age of 82.

On 3 November 1892, Carroll met Arthur Butler and his eldest daughter, Olive, riding in Oxford. Carroll had been at Rugby School with Butler, who went on to be headmaster of Haileybury College and a fellow of Oriel College. After this re-acquaintance, Carroll started to correspond regularly with Arthur and his three daughters Olive, Ruth and Violet.

In this letter, Carroll jokes with Ruth about his inquisitiveness before asking which of his books the family possesses. Carroll sent Sylvie and Bruno to Olive, Alice’s Adventures Underground to Ruth and The Nursery Alice to Violet.

First edition of the first Alice parody.  Described as ‘angry subversion of Alice’s adventures’, Speaking Likenesses was a collaboration between Christina Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite artist Arthur Hughes, with illustrations often derived from original sketches by Rossetti herself. The book was produced for the children's Christmas market and drew considerable inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Alice books, a debt readily acknowledged by Christina Rossetti who knew Carroll personally.

In its anonymous review of the book, the Academy noted rather hopelessly: “This will probably be one of the most popular children's books this winter. We wish we could understand it”. 

In 1886, Carroll was approached by aspiring playwright Henry Savile Clarke, who wished to stage Alice as a two-act operetta. Carroll agreed, on the condition that no coarseness be allowed. He insisted on working closely with Savile Clarke, contributing additional verse to the production and making numerous suggestions for child actors to play various roles.

The first performance was on 23 December 1886 at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, London, Carroll's twelve-year-old friend Phoebe Carlo in the lead role of Alice.  This first production was very successful.  A revival in 1888 at the Globe Theatre with Isa Bowman as Alice was not a financial success, and the operetta was not performed again until after Carroll’s death.

Alice was first published in Russian by an unknown translator in 1879.  Vladimir Nabokov (1900-1945) first read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in English at age six. He began its most famous Russian translation 18 years later while an undergraduate at Cambridge University. This was his first substantial published work, for which he was paid the equivalent of the then-considerable sum of five dollars.

To make the story relevant for a Russian audience, Nabokov retold it in a Russian style and gave Alice a new name: “Ania”. Like all of Nabokov’s writings, his translation of Alice was banned in the USSR and was not published there until 1989. This edition, the first, had already become a rarity. 

With illustrations by S.V. Zalshupin (1898-1931) in the Russian Constructivist style.