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Lot 254

DODGSON (CHARLES LUTWIDGE)
Autograph letter signed ("CL Dodgson"), to [Tom] Taylor ("My dear Taylor"), recommending the latest staging of Alice in Wonderland ("...'Alice's Adventures' at the Polytechnic is fairly done, I think – You would find it worth while taking your children to it, I think...") Christ Church, Oxford, 11 May 1876

4 December 2019, 11:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £2,550 inc. premium

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DODGSON (CHARLES LUTWIDGE)

Autograph letter signed ("CL Dodgson"), to [Tom] Taylor ("My dear Taylor"), recommending the latest staging of Alice in Wonderland ("...'Alice's Adventures' at the Polytechnic is fairly done, I think – You would find it worth while taking your children to it, I think...") and enquiring after a child actress and her mother ("...Do you happen to know what became of that Mrs Cookson & child (stage names 'Miss Logan' and 'Katie Logan') about whom I wrote to you Aug. 16. 1875?... They... were in great pecuniary difficulties. I sent her some money, but have not heard from her since..."); in a postscript he asks whether Queen Mary is a success, 3 pages, traces of mounting overleaf and docketed by Dawson William Turner, 8vo, Christ Church, Oxford, 11 May 1876

Footnotes

'"ALICE'S ADVENTURES" AT THE POLYTECHNIC IS FAIRLY DONE, I THINK' – Lewis Carroll on the latest staging of Alice, a slide-show spectacular mounted that Easter season at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, London.

The present letter appears to be unrecorded. It comes from the collection formed by Dawson William Turner, which includes other letters addressed to Tom Taylor, the well-known playwright and editor of Punch. (It had been Taylor who supplied Dodgson with a letter of introduction to the Punch artist John Tenniel when he was casting about for an illustrator for Alice.)

Dodgson's diaries contain several references to Katie and her mother and his efforts to alleviate their poverty: he considered her acting in Goody Two Shoes 'quite extraordinary' (Lewis Carroll's Diaries, edited by Edward Wakeling, vi, 2001, p.250).

Queen Mary, by Dodgson's occasional host and reluctant photographic subject Alfred Tennyson, had opened at the Lyceum Theatre on 18 April with the customary celebrity audience in attendance, Taylor among their number. Irving gave a bravura performance, but the play was not a great success.

Additional information

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