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Lot 255

DODGSON (CHARLES LUTWIDGE) "LEWIS CARROLL"
Alice's Adventures Under Ground, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY inscribed "Winifred E. Stevens from the Author, May 21./87"; and others (6)

4 December 2019, 11:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £3,187.50 inc. premium

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DODGSON (CHARLES LUTWIDGE) "LEWIS CARROLL"

Alice's Adventures Under Ground, Being a Facsimile of the Original MS. Book Afterwards Developed Into "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed "Winifred E. Stevens from the Author, May 21./87" in purple ink on the half-title, illustrations by the author, half-title loose and opening gatherings shaken, publisher's red cloth gilt, upper joint partly split, upper joint cracked [Williams, Madan and Green 194], 8vo, Macmillan, 1886; AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ("sincerely yours C.L. Dodgson") to "Mrs [Ethel] Stevens", apologising that he was too poorly ("... My head has been a good dealer worse...") to accept visitors, "not even Enid! Love to her (also to Winnie if not too old to accept it!)", one page, in black ink, 8vo, "Ch.[rist] Ch.[urch] Mar. 9/[18]91", pasted inside upper cover of a 1927 edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", with a note of provenance in the hand of a descendant of Mrs. Stevens next to the letter--STEVENS (ENID) Manuscript memoir of her childhood, including recollections of her first meeting, subsequent relationship and feelings for Charles Dodgson, approximately 80 pages, written in pencil (mostly, an "addenda" in ink) on lined paper (recto only), sheets of slightly varying size, loose with old label "E.G.S. Autobiography", 4to, [undated, but c.1942]; and 3 others by Dodgson, including a copy of Alice's Adventures ("Thirty-fifth Thousand", 1872"), with the ownership inscription of "Miss Maud Stevens, Xmas/[18]72" and "Given to Winifred - 1879" on half-title (6)

Footnotes

"I was inclined to think that I was too old to sit on people's knees any more - but this knee was different from other, it had a rightness..." - Enid Stevens (1882-1960), "one of Dodgson's last great Oxford child-friends" (Edward Wakeling, Lewis Carroll: The Man and his Circle, 2015) reminisces about her first meeting with the author in a newly discovered manuscript memoir. Dodgson's fondness for Enid led to him dedicating Sylvia and Bruno Concluded to her, and her affection for him was obvious from her reaction to the news of his death, "It was, for me, the most devastating blow. Mama had never appreciated him, nor realised in the least what his friendship had meant to me..."; and some forty years later she records "I am still resentful" about her mother's lack of understanding, that she had not been allowed to stay with him at the seaside due to "Victorian prudery", and that "Mama did not think it was 'nice' for a little girl to go away alone with an old man!". Dodgson had met the Stevens family, whilst giving logic lessons to Enid's elder sister Winifred (1872-1958) at Oxford High School for Girls. As with Enid, Winifred was the recipient of friendship and gifts from Dodgson (as the inscribed copy of Alice's Adventures in this lot testifies), but it was Enid that he was most devoted, the relationships suggested in the letter to the girls' mother, "... I do not feel 'up' to visitors - not even Enid! Love to her (also to Winnie if not too old to accept it!)"

Provenance: Enid, Winifred and Ethel Stevens; by descent to the present owner.

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