A private collection containing thousands of letters, photographs, books, and illustrations by the author Lewis Carroll has been donated to Christ Church by an American businessman and philanthropist. Jon A. Lindseth gifted the college the unique collection, which also includes a number of early editions of his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland books, some of which have personal inscriptions to family and friends.
Carroll spent most of his life at Christ Church, mainly as an academic specialising in mathematics. This is also where he met Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean at the time, who became the inspiration for the Alice novels.
Lindseth has been an avid collector of Carroll, curating a number of exhibitions on his life works, as well as writing for journals dedicated to him. Gabriel Sewell, the College Librarian at Christ Church, told Cherwell that Lindseth “got in touch by email last July offering Christ Church his Lewis Carroll collection.
“It is very rare to receive such a large collection as a donation. We think it is the largest donation Christ Church Library has received since the eighteenth century. Lindseth’s collection is thought to have been the largest collection in private hands so it would be very difficult to build such a large and varied collection from scratch.”
One first edition copy in the collection of Alice’s Adventures Underground has a note to Alice’s mother, reading: “To Her, whose children’s smiles fed the narrator’s fancy and were his rich reward: from the Author. Xmas 1886.” There are also multiple letters from Carroll, with “many written at Christ Church in his distinctive purple ink,” according to Sewell.
In addition to numerous original writings, the donation came with over 100 photographs, with Carroll being an avid photographer as well as a writer, even going as far as to build a glass studio on the roof above his rooms at Christ Church. Images range from shots of Alice Liddell herself, to famed friends of Carroll’s, such as poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
The collection is on show at an exhibition in Christ Church’s upper library until 17th April, with this marking the first time it has ever been displayed in the UK. Sewell told Cherwell that Christ Church is “planning future exhibitions … and will consider lending material to exhibitions elsewhere, both in the UK and internationally”.
