[Literature] Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Autograph Letter, signed

Lewis Carroll on the Theater

Christ Church, Oxford, March 5, 1880. One sheet folded to make four pages, 5 3/8 x 3 1/2 in. (136 x 89 mm). Four-page autograph letter, signed by Carroll in his characteristic purple ink, to Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Blakemore, mother of Carroll's child-friend Edith Rose "Dolly" Blakemore: "I have had it on my mind for about 4 months, to write to you in answer to your letter about Pilgrim's Progress, to say how entirely I agree in the general principle of not mixing sacred things with comic..." Carroll continues by providing a review of the production and his thoughts on theater. Tipped into red cloth-covered boards (8vo), spine lettered in gilt; original postal envelope, signed by Carroll in purple ink, mounted on front blank, gift inscription, dated 1969, below same envelope.

Autograph letter from Lewis Carroll to Sarah Elizabeth Blakemore, the mother of Edith Rose "Dolly” Blakemore (1872-1947)--one of Carroll's child-friends whose relationship lasted into adulthood--regarding his thoughts on theater.

Carroll first met five-year-old Edith Blakemore during his annual holiday in Eastbourne, East Sussex, in August 1877. The daughter of Sarah and Villiers Blakemore, a Birmingham merchant and publisher, Edith and her family summered at the seaside resort town, where Carroll met them near the beach. Carroll was immediately taken by the child, and wrote in his journal that very same evening, "I have made friends with quite the brightest child, and nearly the prettiest...She seemed to be on springs, and was dancing incessantly to the music...her eyes literally glitter...the mother (was) quiet and pleasant...Dolly is fascinating, I hope to see her again." (Cohen, The Letters of Lewis Carroll, Vol. I, p. 281 n. 2). Of the nearly 200 child-friends that Carroll had known throughout his life, he held Edith in the highest esteem, writing in an 1890 letter (not included), that she was "rather the exception among the hundred or so child-friends who have brightened my life." She would later pass her Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate, and became known as an amateur actress (see Cohen, Letters..., Vol. I, pp. 280-281).

This lot is located in Philadelphia.