Lewis Carroll sketch to fetch thousands

Carroll was a 45-year-old bachelor and was only five years old when he met Edith Blakemore while on holiday at the resort in the summer of 1877 -12 years after the publication of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.

The picture, done in Carroll's trademark violet ink, shows Edith in a beach costume, holding a bucket and spade and leaning against the wheel of a Victorian bathing machine.

It is inscribed by Carroll: "Edith, September 14, 1880."

After their first meeting, Carroll - real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - wrote : "This evening, on the pier, I have made friends with quite the brightest child and nearly the prettiest I have yet seen here."

Auctioneer Bonhams (correct, no apostrophe), which is selling the picture in London tomorrow, said: "Dodgson first made the acquaintance of Edith Blakemore, whilst staying for his annual holiday at Eastbourne in July 1877. He immediately engineered regular meetings with her,engaging her mother to facilitate these."

Edward Wakeling, a leading authority on the life and work of Lewis Carroll and editor of Carroll's diaries,said : "That year, 1877, was the first year Dodgson spent his summer at Eastbourne, repeated every year thereafter until his death."

Bonhams says: "Unusually in his relations with young girls, Dodgson continued a friendly correspondence with Edith for nearly 20 years. He acknowledged this in a letter written in March 1890, addressing her as my old friend Edith' (then aged 18), describing her as "rather the exception among the hundred or so child-friends,who have brightened my life. Usually the child becomes so entirely a different being as she grows into a woman that our friendship had to change too...I hope we may continue equally good friends during the years."

Edith was born in 1872 and died, in her mid seventies, in 1947. She never married.

Her father, Arthur Villiers Blakemore, was a hardware merchant and publisher,who produced a monthly journal, named Hardware, Metals and Machinery.

Carroll expert Edward Wakeling said: "Edith showered Dodgson with gifts for many years - things she had made for him and drawings she had painted for him.

"She must have been a talented child. There is correspondence between them from 1878 until 1896 (when she was 24). Dodgson also wrote frequently to her mother.

"Dodgson's bachelorhood comes from his profession. As a Victorian Don at Oxford, he was not allowed to marry and had to take Holy Orders. He was made a Deacon of the Church of England in 1861 but never proceeded to full priest's orders. The requirement to remain unmarried was changed in the late 1870s but Dodgson maintained his commitment of celibacy for the rest of his life, as did many of his colleagues.

"Yet he had normal interests in females and was comfortable in their company. He tended to associate with children and married women, probably a safer option for him. The Blakemores were typical in this respect.

"The wheel in the drawing (coming up for sale at Bonhams)is from a bathing machine, an object of great fascination to Dodgson and which appears in some of his humorous poems, notably The Hunting Of The Snark (1876).

"The violet ink Dodgson used was standard issue at the time and available in the Christ Church Common Room in Oxford. It has become something of a trademark for Dodgson letters but it didn't start until October 1870 and disappears in the early 1890s."

At their auction on June 24, Bonhams are also selling two books signed by Dodgson and presented by him to Edith Blakemore.

These are An Easter Greeting To Every Child Who Loves "Alice" (correct, inverted commas around Alice) which is expected to fetch between £1,500 and £2,000; and Symbolic Logic Part 1 (one) Elementary, with its rare dust jacket (pre-sale estimate: £2,000-£3,000).

Also in the sale is a signed first edition presentation copy of Alice's Adventures Under Ground, which Dodgson gave to Edith's mother(pre-sale estimate: £2,000 to £3,000).