$80,000 Estimate for Lewis Carroll’s Hand-Colored Photograph of Alice Liddell

Freeman’s | Hindman will present the first of several installments of Collections of an Only Child: Seventy Years a Bibliophile, the Library of Justin G. Schiller at its New York saleroom on December 5. The auction will feature more than 250 lots from the well known book dealer and collector.

Lewis Carroll’s hand-colored presentation photograph of Alice Liddell, his muse and inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, comes with what the auction house describes as a "conservative estimate" of $50,000 to $80,000. Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) took the photograph of then eight-year-old Liddell in the Deanery Garden at Christ Church in Oxford in July 1860. It was just two years later that he wrote the now famous story. 

Also going under the hammer is his 1889 autograph register listing recipients of presentation copies of The Nursery Alice, a version of the story for children under five. It comprises 18 manuscript pages in his customary purple ink, on rectos only, listing 121 names and addresses. Symbols indicate whether a recipient had a copy in "P. in C." (Pictures with Color), “sent from London", “sent from Oxford" and whether “entered in Letter-Register". Among the many names listed, several are of Carroll's relatives, including his sisters (the first entry) and nieces.

Entry No. 34 lists "Mrs. Hargreaves" who is Alice Liddell, at this time in her late thirties and married to cricketer Reginald Hargreaves with whom she had three sons. Carroll sent her two inscribed copies of the book, both of which are now in the Berol Collection in the Fales Library at New York University. There are also copies for illustrator John Tenniel, poet Christina Rossetti (No. 68), and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth (No. 33), inspiration for Duck in Alice's Adventure in Wonderland.