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

Lewis Carroll on Entering University

Eastbourne, September 6, 1883. One sheet folded to make four pages, 6 x 4 in. (152 x 102 mm). Four-page autograph letter, signed by Carroll in his characteristic purple ink, to Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Blakemore, giving advice, presumably for one of her children, on entering university: "...I quite agree with you that a good education is most desirable in all lines of the law...The way to get his name put down for admission is simply to write to the head of the place. As to preparing for matriculation, you seem to have only 3 possible courses--to keep him at school, to send him to a tutor, to let him work at home...Young men sometimes prepare, in Oxford itself, for entering...", etc. Tipped into red cloth-covered boards (8vo), lettered in gilt along spine; gift inscription on front blank, dated 1969.

Four-page 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.

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). Carroll and the Blakemore's relationship is one the longest on record during his life, lasting for nearly 15 years, up until his death in 1898.

This lot is located in Philadelphia.