Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Unknown photo of Lewis Carroll

I've found this photo in Toronto's City Hall Archive, section of Arts and Literature. Obviously this is just a photocopy, not original. Text is almost unreadable, but no doubts there is in caps: CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON and Ms. ALICE LIDDELL. Small italic letters couldn't read just the date: 1862, but I'm not sure. Who knows more about it, or has bigger image, please let me know.

Click here to enlarge

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Intriguing but I don't think it's real. It's most likely photoshopped. Alice is posed as she is in one of the garden pictures, wearing the same style of dress--which is late 1850s. Her legs and feet are in the same positions as they are in that portrait. The picture of Carroll just looks plunked next to cut out photo of Alice and the two are put against an Oxford background.
In 1862, Alice would be 10. In this picture, she appears a younger child as she was in the above referenced garden-photo, which portrait was taken about the same time as the "beggar girl", cica 1858-59, when Alice was 6-7 years old.

Anonymous said...

I don't think it's real - their faces don't look right at all. Almost as though they have been drawn on. Also, at the bottom of the picture, you can make out the words 'Jabberwocky & Son' - so i think it's been photoshopped by a fan

Anonymous said...

the photo isnt real, but you should read the book "alice i have been" by melanie benjamin. it might help.

Corrado Gavinelli said...

AT LEAST 1855
Alice Liddell was born in 1852, and (as deduced from the Diaries of Dodgson and the news of his biographers), the future novelist Lewis Carroll knew the girl when she was 4 years old, in Oxford, while the Reverend was photographing the city's Cathedral .
Therefore, the photo should be of 1855.
It may not be 1862 as Oleg Lipchenko reports, but also at most of 1857 (5 years old) or of 1858-59, as rightly assumed the anonymous Charlotte in her response.
Corrado Gavinelli
Torre Pellice (Turin - Italy), January 16, 2015

Corrado Gavinelli said...

Previously I had Posted a Wrong Comment regarding some calculations of dates for the Picture with Doddgson and Alice Liddle, that now I must correct in the right following manner:
AT LEAST 1856
Alice Liddell was born in 1852, and (as deduced from the Diaries of Dodgson and the news of his biographers), the future novelist Lewis Carroll knew the girl when she was 4 years old, in Oxford, while the Reverend was photographing the city's Cathedral .
So the picture should be 1856.
It may not be 1862 as Oleg Lipchenko reports, but also to the maximum of 1857 (when she was 5 years old), or excess, of 1858-59, as rightly assumed the anonymous Charlotte in its response.
Corrado Gavinelli
Torre Pellice (Turin - Italy), January 16, 2015