Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, to give the book its full title, was first published in 1865 and has never been out of print since. Its author Lewis Carroll – a pen name – was from Cheshire and lived here until the age of eleven. He was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in 1832 in Daresbury, where his father was the local parson.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1902; Baptism register entry for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson; author portrait
Given this local connection, Cheshire
Archives and Local Studies are fortunate to have a large Lewis Carroll
collection which is about to be made available to the public at our search room
in Chester. This is thanks in part to a
children’s literature enthusiast who generously donated close to four hundred
books to us in 2017, but it is also thanks to the commitment of two volunteers
that the collection will soon be accessible.
Volunteers play an important role at
Cheshire Record Office, from assisting with conservation work to helping us
make our records accessible online, and working with staff to sort through the
many new deposits we receive each year.
Along with long-standing volunteer John Dixon, who sadly passed away
earlier this year, our volunteer Marilyn Ainsworth has spent many hours on the
Lewis Carroll project. We asked Marilyn
to explain how she became involved and tell us about the collection.
Marilyn spent six years as an Archives
Assistant at Cheshire Record Office before retiring in 2014, but knew she would
eventually like to spend some time volunteering. Given her interest in visual projects, our
Local Studies department – with its donations of drawings, paintings,
photographs, news flyers and books – was ideal and she started with the Lewis
Carroll project in 2017. The first task
was to look through each of the 396 items that had been deposited with us,
sorting them into categories and making notes such as the names of the
publisher and illustrator, the publication date and a brief description of the
content. We have Alice books ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day
and editions in over twenty languages, so Marilyn had to do some delving to
identify them. She described identifying
the different languages (as varied as Japanese, Russian, Bulgarian, Latin,
Esperanto, Afrikaans, Hebrew, Aboriginal and Manx, to name just some) as the
most challenging part of the project and, whilst online translation tools have
been helpful in identifying books with the Latin alphabet, we have some
editions in Oriental languages that as yet remain unclassified.
Translations in Hebrew, Japanese and Latin
The project has involved sorting
through numerous copies not just of Alice
in Wonderland, but also Alice Through the Looking Glass and other
works by Lewis Carroll such as The
Hunting of the Snark and the poem Jabberwocky. The collection contains books with Alice as a
character and many non-fiction titles, as well as biographies of Carroll and
books of his journals, letters and photographs - including some of Alice
Liddell, upon whom Carroll’s stories were based. A couple of photos stood out for Marilyn: one
that was taken of Alice later in life in America, and another taken by Lewis
Carroll looking up at his future sister-in-law (another Alice) balancing on a
first-floor window ledge – clearly taken in the days before health and
safety!
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| Alice Liddell, 1932 |
Marilyn told us that the most
enjoyable part of her work was that every book is different, but when asked if
she had a favourite edition, her response was any with illustrations by Sir
John Tenniel, the book’s original illustrator – these were the drawings in the Alice books she read as a child and they
are how she thinks of Alice and the other characters. She also found some of the more unusual books
interesting, for instance funny versions like Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot, published in 2007.
Illustration by Sir John Tenniel; selection of Alice books in different languages
There are many other books in the Lewis Carroll collection, from a facsimile of the original handwritten text, to early and most recent editions of the Alice stories featuring numerous different illustrators, elaborate pop-up versions and stage adaptations, to name just a few. Although a small number of books were loaned to Chester’s Storyhouse for an exhibition to coincide with a production of Alice in Wonderland in 2017, the full collection is soon to be made available for public viewing for the first time. Take a look at our online catalogue over the coming weeks and see exactly what the collection holds.
Illustration by Sir John Tenniel; selection of Alice books in different languages
There are many other books in the Lewis Carroll collection, from a facsimile of the original handwritten text, to early and most recent editions of the Alice stories featuring numerous different illustrators, elaborate pop-up versions and stage adaptations, to name just a few. Although a small number of books were loaned to Chester’s Storyhouse for an exhibition to coincide with a production of Alice in Wonderland in 2017, the full collection is soon to be made available for public viewing for the first time. Take a look at our online catalogue over the coming weeks and see exactly what the collection holds.
Marilyn is continuing to volunteer
with our Local Studies department, now helping to catalogue a large amount of
photograph negatives. We would like to
thank Marilyn once more for all her work on the Lewis Carroll collection, and
we also wish everyone a happy World Book Day and World Book Night!
