Discovery Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/21/2012
Charles L. Dodgson
[Charles L. Dodgson]. Original 5.25 x 6.25 oval albumen photo on a 6.75 x 8.75 mount, a full-length image of Ella Bickersteth (Monier-Williams) Dodgson, An avid and accomplished photographer, particularly enjoyed capturing young girls on film. Carroll recorded in his diary on May 1st 1866 his first meeting with the Monier-Williams family and his wish to photograph Ella 'whom I had noticed before'. Mrs Monier-Williams brought her daughter to Carroll's rooms to be photographed on the 24th of that month, and a couple of time during 1866.
The present photo is a charming photo; with Ella, gazing intently into the camera, holds what appears to be a cane as though she was shouldering a rifle, perhaps as part of the imaginative games which made Dodgson a favorite companion of children. A handwritten note on the reverse, signed by Bishop John Bickersteth, grandson of the the girl in the picture, explains the photos provenance. In Part: “Obe of the photographs taken by Lewis Carroll in 1865 of my grandother Ella Biskerseth.” After noting that most of the family’s collection of Carrolliana was sold at Phillips’ in 1994, he continues: “I write this in the presence of the only Alice Liddel alive (Mrs. Christopher Allen), great great niece of Mrs. Hargreaves, the original Alice [Liddell], who came over to see us on 22 Nov. 1994.” The “real” Alice (1852-1934), enchanted as a young girl by the stories she heard from family friend Charles Dodgson, begged the author to write them down, which he did in his classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. The “living” Alice has similar Dodgson photo of Ella Bickerstaff appears on page 86 of Letters of Lewis Carroll (MacMillan & Co., 1933). Original photos by Dodgson are aggressively pursued by collectors of nineteenth-century fine photography, and examples with documentation demonstrating direct descent from the original sitter are extremely rare.
Rare Photo by Lewis Carroll
writer of Alice and Wonderland
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