Heading: (Carroll, Lewis)
Author: Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge
Title: Photograph of Alexandra “Xie” Kitchin
Place Published:
Publisher:
Date Published: 5 July 1870
Description:

Albumen print on cabinet card mount. Photograph: 14.8x10.2 cm ;(4x5¾"); card: 16x10.8 cm (6¼x4¼").

Inscribed in various hands: "Xie" (ink), "H.H.," "Age 7," and "presented by Lewis Carroll" (pencil). Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known as Lewis Carroll, who took up photography in 1856, was one of the most accomplished Victorian amateur photographers. He is most famous for his portraits of girls. On seeing one of his child portraits, Tennyson agreed to sit for him, saying, "You, I suppose, dream photographs." ;

Beginning in 1856 Dodgson took about three thousand negatives, mostly ;portraits, over the span of about twenty-five years. He mastered the difficult ;techniques of the collodion process and devoted himself to art and ;composition, achieving results equaling those of the best professionals of his ;day. "The apparently contradictory aspects of his personality, artistic and ;imaginative on the one hand, and pedantically careful on the other, became ;the mainspring of his creative output, both as Charles Dodgson, the ;photographer, and as Lewis Carroll, children's author" (Taylor, ;in ;Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography). ; ;

Xie (pronounced "Ecksy," for Alexandra) was one of the most notable of ;Dodgson's photographic subjects. She is now thought to have been six when ;this photograph was taken. Xie posed for Dodgson from age four until she ;turned sixteen. "Another of Lewis Carroll's early favourites, was Miss ;Alexandra (Xie) Kitchin, daughter of the Dean of Durham. Her father was for fifteen years Censor of the unattached members of the University of Oxford so that Dodgson had plenty of opportunities of photographing his little friend" (Life and ;Letters of Lewis Carroll). ;

"With the exception of four pictures displayed at the 1858 annual exhibition of ;the Photographic Society of London, Dodgson had never exhibited his ;pictures, which were only known to a narrow circle of friends and ;acquaintances" (Fringier, "Out of Focus: A Portrait of Charles Lutwidge ;Dodgson" in ;Strange Sisters: Literature and Aesthetics in the Nineteenth ;Century). ;

Provenance: Henry Holiday, with his monogram on verso. Holiday, who illustrated ;The Hunting of the Snark, was a close friend of Dodgson. An album of Dodgson photographs belonging to Holiday is now at Princeton.

Slight stain to left edge, a few spots, image fading somewhat around image outlines, minor soiling; very good or better.