Online 'wonderland' for Lewis Carroll fans

Admirers of Lewis Carroll’s fantasies for children can surf into a rare 21st-century wonderland: an online version of the author’s unpublished personal scrapbook.

Carroll collected about 130 scrapbook items between the years 1855 and 1872, during which he wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and its sequel “Through the Looking-Glass.”

The collection includes photos and other illustrations, newspaper clippings and hand-written annotations.

An internet version has been made available by the Library of Congress, which acquired the original soon after Carroll’s death in 1898.

Online features include an introduction by a Carroll expert, timelines, a portrait gallery and a system for searching the text for a word or a phrase, all at http://international.loc.gov/intldl/carrollhtml/

Carroll chose and arranged the items in the scrapbook personally, throwing light on his interests and collecting habits, said library spokesman Guy Lamolinara.

A lecturer in mathematics at Oxford University, he also published under his real name – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – such titles as “Euclid and Modern Rivals” and “Symbolic Logic.”