Beschreibung:

DODGSON, CHARLES LUTWIDGE ("Lewis Carroll"). Autograph letter signed ("C L Dodgson") to Mrs. Henry Arbuthnot Feilden, Christ Church, Oxford, 25 February 1876, 3 pages, small 8vo, in purple ink, remnants of mounting on integral blank last page : "...don't reproach yourself for my misinterpretation of Helen's message [Helen was the Feildens' daughter; Dodgson's friendship with the girl began in 1872; he photographed her a year later] -- for I assure you, if she were to send me a message upbraiding me for not writing, I should take it as a proof that we were on excellent terms, and that she had a heart which (to use Coleridge's exquisite lines) 'Must needs express its love's excess In words of unmeant bitterness'! I have written to tell her about the new book [probably The Hunting of the Snark ], & have confided to her a secret regarding it [possibly that the dedicatory verse contains a double acrostic on Gertrude Chataway's name], which she is to divulge to no one but you..." Not in Letters , ed. M.N. Cohen & R.L. Green (thought a six-line fragment of the letter, the text from an old Maggs Bros. catalogue description, is printed in footnote 2, p. 242); Autograph letter signed ("C.L. Dodgson") to Edward Williams Byron Nicholson (Bodleian librarian and father of May Daisy Nicholson, a friend of Dodgson's), Christ Church, Oxford, 2 December 1893, 1 1/2 pages, oblong 8vo, in grey ink : "You will be wondering at not getting any 'proofs,' to criticize, of my monograph on 'the Morality of Sport': but I have had to give up the idea of publishing it in the Preface to 'Sylvie & Bruno Concluded' [published on 29 December 1893]: I found it too big a subject to deal with in that way. Some day I hope to publish it, probably as a Magazine-article: & then I will come to you for the assistance you have so kindly consented to give me..." Dodgson's monograph, if ever written, does not appear to have been published. Not in Letters , ed. Cohen & Green (though about the first half of the letter, the text from an old Maggs Bros. catalogue description, is printed in footnote 1, p. 977). (2)