Lewis Carroll collection donated to Christ Church college

One of the largest privately held collection of works by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known as Lewis Carroll, has been donated to Christ Church, University of Oxford. 

This includes more than 200 autograph letters, as well as photographs, books, illustrations and other works gifted by the American businessman, philanthropist, book collector, author and Carroll scholar Jon A Lindseth. The donation to the college’s library – the largest to date – also included works by the English artist, poet, author and musician Edward Lear.

As well as being an author, Carroll was also a mathematician and logician at the college, which is where he met Alice Liddell, the inspiration behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The collections contains a large number of early editions, including a first edition of the 1886 facsimile copy of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground inscribed to Alice’s mother, Lorina Liddell. This copy is inscribed by Carroll: "To Her, whose children’s smiles fed the narrator’s fancy and were his rich reward: from the Author. Xmas 1886." The Hunting of the Snark and mathematical works like The Game of Logic and Symbolic Logic are also included in the donation.

According to the college, cataloguing and digitisation of the collection "has just started", and enquiries can be made by emailing library@chch.ox.ac.uk. An exhibition displaying some of the items in the Lewis Carroll Collection is being held in Christ Church’s Upper Library, and will be on until 17th April 2025.