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Accession number:
PML 352875
Published:
[Oxford, England], Summer 1858.
Description:
1 photographic print
Credit:
Gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987.
Notes:
Title derived from Wakeling's "Photographs of Lewis Carroll."
From left to right: Edith Mary Liddell (1854-1876), Lorina Charlotte Liddell (1849-1930) abd Alice Pleasance Liddell (1852-1934) on a sofa taken in the Deanery Garden, Christ Church, Oxford, Summer 1858.
Binding:
Matted.
Provenance:
Alice Liddell Hargreaves (her sale); from the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Lewis Carroll Collection.
Catalog Link:
Department:
Lewis Carroll, the penname of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was an important amateur photographer in the Victorian era. Shortly after he purchased his first Ottewill camera in 1856, Carroll and a friend were trying to capture a likeness of the cathedral from the Christ Church deanery garden when they happened upon the young Alice Pleasance Liddell (1852-1934) and her sisters, Lorina and Edith Liddell. Carroll, who already knew their parents and brother, began taking photographs of the children. This image, one of the most arresting of the three girls together, was taken about four years before their fabled picnic excursion up the river Thames to Godstow, during which Carroll first told Alice, Lorina, and Edith the story that would become a children's classic.
Although Alice inspired the heroine in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, her sisters, Edith and Lorina, also make appearances in the book--as the Lory and the Eaglet in the "Mouse's Tale" episode; and in the book's prefatory poem as Prima and Tertia.