Lewis Carroll, $80,000 for photograph of Alice

A photograph taken by the English writer Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), colored by hand, which portrays the little girl Alice Liddell, his muse and source of inspiration for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, will be put up for sale by the house of American Freeman’s – Hindman auction on Thursday 5 December in New York with a “conservative estimate” of between 50,000 and 80,000 dollars. Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) took the photo of 8-year-old Liddell in the deanery garden of Christ Church at Oxford University in July 1860. Just two years later he wrote the famous book.

Also up for auction will be Carroll’s 1889 autograph register listing the recipients of presentation copies of “The Nursery Alice,” a version of the story for children under five. It is 18 pages handwritten in purple ink, recto only, listing 121 names and addresses. The symbols indicate whether the recipient had a copy in “P. in C.” (Pictures with C.), “shipped with color” or “in C.” (Pictures with Color), “shipped from London or “shipped from Oxford.” Among the many names listed, several are of Carroll’s relatives, including sisters and nieces.

Item no. 34 lists “Mrs. Hargreaves”, who was Alice Liddell, then in her early thirties and married to the cricketer Reginald Hargreaves, with whom she had three children. Carroll sent her two copies of the book with dedication, both preserved in the Berol Collection of the Fales Library of New York University. There are also copies for the illustrator John Tenniel, for the poet Christina Rossetti (n. 68) and for the Reverend Robinson Duckworth (n. 33), Duck’s inspiration in “Alice in Wonderland”. The Carroll material going up for auction belonged to Justin G. Schiller, a book dealer and collector.