Lewis Carroll Beatrice Henley, 1864 Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin

From February 19 to April 24, 1999, The Equitable Gallery will present an exhibition commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the death of Charles L. Dodgson. An Oxford don, mathematician, photographer, theologian, logician, poet, and inventor of games and puzzles, he is perhaps best known as the author (under the pen name Lewis Carroll) of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass—two of the greatest children’s stories ever written in the English language.

Reflections in a Looking Glass explores the breadth of Carroll’s life and work, presenting a rare collection of over 100 objects, almost all of which have never been shown in New York, including rare original manuscripts, photographs, drawings, games and letters.

Importantly, the exhibition includes more than 60 original photographs by Carroll, who is generally acknowledged to be one of the great photographers of the age.

Oscar Rejlander Lewis Carroll, 1863 Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Reflections in a Looking Glass was organized by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, and circulated by Curatorial Assistance, Inc., Los Angeles. The Equitable Gallery is sponsored by The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, a member of the global AXA Group.

Lewis Carroll’s numerous and disparate interests are more closely related than might be first assumed. They are inspired by his appreciation of beauty in its many forms, whether art, nature, mathematics, or the pages of the Bible.

Reflections in a Looking Glass displays such treasures as The Rectory Magazine, an illustrated journal created by Carroll and his siblings that was named after the family’s home in Croft, Yorkshire; the copy of the 1866 edition of Alice—the first “published” edition—that Carroll presented to one of his favorite child subjects, Alexandra (Xie) Kitchin, in 1867; The Game of Logic, an 1887 board game he invented; playful pen and ink drawings, including one of a boy boxing with a housecat; Carroll’s hand-corrected proof of a paper for his lectures on logic; and rare foreign language editions of the author’s books, including Vladimir Nabokov’s 1923 Russian translation of Alice.

The photographs on display include portraits of Carroll’s family, his friends and colleagues, and celebrities of the day, as well as scenes of the Dodgson family home and the countryside around Oxford. But it is with his portraits of children that Carroll’s talents as a photographer were most fully realized. Those on view in the exhibition include a photograph of Alice Liddell—the subject of Carroll’s most famous books—dressed as a beggar girl, most likely taken in 1859; a beautiful portrait of Margaret Anne Ashley Dodgson, the sixth of Carroll’s seven sisters, taken a year after he purchased his first camera; and one of Carroll’s greatest photographs, a portrait of young Beatrice Mary Henley, a daughter of the Vicar of Putney.

The exhibition is accompanied by a related publication entitled Reflections in a Looking Glass, A Centennial Celebration of Lewis Carroll, Photographer, published by Aperture. The author of the book is Morton N. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York, whose books on Carroll include Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Knopf, 1995).

Lewis Carroll Margaret Dodgson, ca. 1857 Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Reflections in a Looking Glass was curated by authorities at the Ransom Center on a wide range of disciplines: Roy Flukinger, Senior Curator of Photography and Film; John O. Kirkpatrick, Curator of Twentieth-Century British and American Manuscripts; Sally Leach, Associate Director; Richard Oram, Head Librarian; and Robert N. Taylor, Archives and Manuscripts Librarian.

Established in 1957, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center is one of the world’s preeminent institutions for literary and cultural research. The principal rare books and manuscripts collection of The University of Texas at Austin, the Center is noted for its late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British, American, and French literary materials, with major additional strengths in photography, art, music, film, and theatre arts. The Center’s collections contain approximately thirty million manuscripts, one million books, five million photographs and over 100,000 works of art.

The Equitable Gallery presents works from all fields of the visual arts, including exhibitions originating outside of New York that would not otherwise have a presence in the city, as well as works from New York collections that would benefit from preservation and public presentation. The Equitable Gallery is located in the Atrium lobby of The Equitable Building at 787 Seventh Avenue in New York City. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free.