Christ Church receives Lewis Carroll’s own copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This remarkable volume, potentially worth several million pounds, has been donated to Christ Church by Ellen A. Michelson, an American philanthropist and bibliophile who wished the book to return to what she viewed as its natural home. The copy will be cared for jointly by Christ Church and the Bodleian Library and will be unveiled to the public next month, first in a one-day viewing in the Bodleian and subsequently as part of a special exhibition of Carroll's work in Christ Church Upper Library.

The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – better known by his pen name ‘Lewis Carroll’ – studied, taught, and lived at Christ Church, teaching Mathematics at the College from 1855 to 1881. In 1856, Dodgson befriended Henry Liddell, the new Dean of the College, and his family. His relationship with the Liddell children inspired one of the most enduring works of children’s literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was the Dean’s daughter Alice Liddell, then about nine years old, who persuaded Carroll to write down the story after he told it to the family during a boating trip in 1862.

As The Times notes, this particular book comes from the ‘suppressed’ first print run of 1865, of which only a small number remain. Most were withdrawn and pulped after illustrator Sir John Tenniel expressed dissatisfaction with the printed quality of his drawings. From that troubled print run only 23 copies are now known to survive.

Carroll’s own copy is especially important. It contains ten of Tenniel’s original pencil sketches, bound into the volume, representing ten of the 42 drawings created for the first edition. Only 31 of the original sketches are known to survive worldwide, making this set exceptionally valuable for scholarship.

The book also includes Carroll’s handwritten notes for what would later become the ‘Nursery Alice’ edition, published in 1890 for very young readers.

Christ Church Librarian Gabriel Sewell told The Times that the volume represents ‘the most special and best of all the surviving copies’, adding that its condition and provenance make it uniquely significant: ‘What is so special is that it was Carroll’s own working copy. If this book had been available to buy there is no chance we would have had the funds to purchase it.’

Since its publication, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has become one of the most influential works of Victorian literature, shaping art, film, design, and popular culture. As Sewell puts it: ‘Alice is just everywhere. It seems that every time you read an article somebody is having to go down a rabbit hole.’

The arrival of this copy comes exactly a century after Christ Church’s own first-edition copy was stolen from the Senior Common Room. Despite hopes that it might one day reappear, it has never been recovered, leaving a gap in the College’s literary heritage that this new donation helps repair.

Sewell reflected in The Times: ‘It is an extremely generous gift from a philanthropist who had no connection with Oxford but was very keen for it to come to the right place.’

Christ Church is honoured to steward this extraordinary volume, which will support teaching, research, and public engagement for generations to come. We are deeply grateful to Ellen A. Michelson for her exceptional generosity and for entrusting the College with such an important piece of literary history.