Daresbury-born Lewis Carroll's address book could fetch £30,000 at auction

The exercise book contains the names and addresses of the 121 relatives and friends and some of their infant daughters to whom Carroll wished to send copies of his 1890 book, The Nursery Alice, a shortened version of his 1865 masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.

Carroll (real name : Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) compiled the address book, in his favourite purple ink in the summer of 1889 and among others, the names and addresses include those of his Daresbury-born sister Mary Collingwood and the real-life Alice, Alice Hargreaves, the Oxford girl who inspired and implored Carroll to write Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.

Now Lewis Carroll’s address book is expected to sell for between £25,000 and £35,000 when it is auctioned at Sotheby’s in London next Thursday.

Lewis Carroll was born at the Old Parsonage, Daresbury, on January 27 1832 and was the eldest son and third child of the Rev Charles Dodgson, who was vicar of Daresbury for 16 years between 1827 and 1843.

Lewis Carroll spent the first 11 years of his life, from 1832 until 1843, at Daresbury and he is commemorated in the stained glass windows at All Saints Church.

Carroll’s biographer Morton Cohen explained how Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland came to be written: He said: “Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) took the three daughters of the Dean of his Oxford college Christ Church on the river picnic on July 4,1862.

"When the girls cried out for Carroll to tell them a story, the Oxford don complied by beginning a tale about Alice’s adventures down a rabbit hole.

"Later on Alice kept pleading with him to write the story down for her.

"He finally did and gave her as a Christmas present in 1864, a soft green leather booklet that contained the tale, written out in his own fine hand script and illustrated with his own drawings.

"That story ultimately became Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.”