Beschreibung:

DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge ("Lewis Carroll"). 8 original albumen photographs of the children of George Macdonald, all three-quarter length. July-October 1863. 127 x 95mm to 78 x 86 mm, three trimmed into oval shape (three slightly faded, one with minor pale spotting), all mounted on two sheets of card loose from an album. One sheet with caption heading "At 12 Earls Terrace by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll ", and each sitter and other locations labelled, in an unidentified hand (presumably by a family member). LEWIS CARROLL'S PORTRAITS OF THE EIGHT MACDONALD CHILDREN, THE FIRST AUDIENCE TO HEAR THE MANUSCRIPT OF "ALICE'S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND". Dodgson met the poet-novelist-cleric George Macdonald, author of At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872) in 1859. The two shared an interest in fantasy and story-telling, and the influence of Macdonald's work can be seen in some episodes of Alice . They became good friends, and after Dodgson had produced his first draft of Alice's Adventures Under Ground , he sent it to Macdonald and his wife to read to their eight children. It was an instant success, and one of the children, Greville Matheson, later recalled his "braggart avowal that I wished there were 60,000 volumes of it". On May 9 1863, a few months before these photographs were taken, Dodgson triumphantly recorded in his diary "They wish me to publish". Macdonald may also have influenced Dodgson's choice of John Tenniel to illustrate Alice , after the publication of his designs for Undine , Macdonald's favourite fairy romance. The photographs, of Mary Josephine, Irene, Caroline Grace, Robert Falconer, Lilia Scott, Greville Matheson, Winifred Louisa and Ronald, were taken at three of the family's London homes: 12 Earls Terrace, Kensington; Elm Lodge, Hampstead; and The Retreat, Hammersmith. Mary was a favourite of Dodgson's, and a number of his letters to her, and rather fewer to her sister Lilia, are known. The earliest of these is dated May 23, 1864, and includes classic Dodgson nonsense "It's been so frightfully hot here that I've been almost too weak to hold a pen, and even if I had been able, there was no ink - it had all evaporated into a cloud of black steam, and in that state it has been floating about the room, inking the walls and ceiling till they're hardly fit to be seen: today it is cooler, and a little has come back into the ink-bottle in the form of black snow". The last, ten years later in June 1874, congratulates Mary on her engagement and hopes that their friendship "will continue for a dozen (or more) years to come what it has been for a dozen years past". The photograph of Greville Macdonald is perhaps Dodgson's most famous portrait study of a young boy. (8)