Major Lewis Carroll Collection Donated to Oxford by American Book Collector
Christ Church Oxford
An electrotype for the frontispiece of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, People’s Edition (1887)
The Jon A Lindseth Lewis Carroll collection, one of the world’s largest private Lewis Carroll collections, has been donated to Christ Church Oxford where the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known as Lewis Carroll taught mathematics from 1855 to 1881.
In 1856 Carroll became friends with Henry Liddell, the new Dean of the college, and his family. His friendship with the Liddell children led him to create one of the most famous and enduring children’s stories, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which was first published in 1865.
"The Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll collection covers all areas of his output including manuscripts, photographs, and an extensive number of significant early editions of his works, including the Alice books, The Hunting of the Snark and mathematical works such as The Game of Logic and Symbolic Logic," said Christ Church college librarian Gabriel Sewell who said it was an amazingly generous donation.
"There is also an impressive collection of translations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a testament to Jon’s editorship of the monumental Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translation of Lewis Carroll’s Masterpiece, which traces the history of the translation of Alice into more than 170 languages in more than 7,600 editions."
The collection includes the original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the tale which became Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and was given to Alice Liddell as a Christmas gift in 1864. This copy is inscribed in the author’s hand to Lorina Liddell, Alice’s mother.
Also in the donation is Fun For All! A Collection of Mirthful Morsels for Merry Moments (New York, 1867). This is a unique copy of the first American Alice which appeared as a pirated edition in the journal Merryman’s Monthly for January and February 1867. It contains almost the complete text of Alice, but lacks the final five paragraphs.
5/5
Christ Church Oxford
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, translated into Russian by Vladimir Nabokov, Berlin, 1923
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Christ Church Oxford
Assisted self-portrait of Carroll
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Christ Church Oxford
Alice's Adventures Under Ground presented by Carroll to Lorina Liddell, 1886
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Christ Church Oxford
Alice in Wonderland A Musical Dream Play, 1886
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Christ Church Oxford
First edition of the first parody of Alice, Speaking Likenesses by Christina Rossetti, 1874
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Christ Church Oxford
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, translated into Russian by Vladimir Nabokov, Berlin, 1923
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Christ Church Oxford
Assisted self-portrait of Carroll
In addition, the collection includes a translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into Russian by Vladimir Nabokov (Berlin, 1923). This was produced by Nabokov while an undergraduate at Cambridge. 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.
Other highlights include:
an assisted self-portrait photogaph of Lewis Carroll, taken at Christ Church in March 1874.
an electrotype for the frontispiece of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, People’s Edition (1887). 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.
a copy of Through the Looking-Glass which appeared in late 1871, bearing an inscription from the illustrator John Tenniel using his characteristic monogram, and a pencil reproduction of the illustration of Alice wearing her golden crown.
a photograph of Xie Kitchin by Lewis Carroll taken in the glass studio he had built on the roof of his rooms at Christ Church. Xie was the daughter of one of Carroll’s Christ Church colleagues, and appeared regularly in his photographs throughout the 1870s.
a theater poster for Alice in Wonderland, "A Musical Dream Play”, 1886 which opened on December 23, 1886 at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, London, with Carroll's 12-year-old friend Phoebe Carlo in the lead role of Alice.
Christina Rossetti's Speaking Likenesses (London, 1874), the first edition of the first Alice parody, produced for the children's Christmas market and which drew inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Alice books, a debt readily acknowledged by Christina Rossetti who knew Carroll personally.
To celebrate the donation the college has opened an Upper Library exhibition showcasing some of the highlights of the collection and an online exhibition will follow. Cataloguing and digitisation of the collection has just started.
