ONE of the rarest copies of Lewis Carroll’s classic book, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, is expected to sell for between £1.5 million and £2 million at an auction in America later this month.

But the book might never have been written if Carroll had not met the real-life Alice: Alice Liddell, who later married former England and Hampshire cricketer Reginald Hargreaves and settled in Lyndhurst.

The copy of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, which will be auctioned at Christie’s in New York on June 16, is “excessively rare” because it is one of only 22 known 1865 first edition copies of the book and, of these, 16 are in institutional libraries.

Only six remain in private hands and only two of these six still have their original binding and the copy coming up for sale in America is considered to be the finest of these two copies.

Auctioneers Christie’s confirm: “No other copy in the original binding in this condition exists in private hands.”

The copy coming up for sale has had six owners .

The Very Reverend George William Kitchin, was the original owner of the book.

He was a friend of Lewis Carroll, who gave the book to Kitchin, who became Dean of Winchester in 1883 until 1894. In the 1850s Kitchen was the headmaster of Twyford School, in Winchester, where Lewis Carroll’s brother Edwin Heron Dodgson was a pupil.

Kitchin later gave the book to his eldest daughter, Alexandra Kitchin, affectionately known as ‘Xie’.

Xie sold the book at Sotheby’s in London on April 6, 1925, but died on the day of the sale.

New York financier,Carl Pforzheimer was the book’s third owner and in 1974, Harriet Borland, an American book collector, became the book’s fourth owner.

Then the book was bought by Los Angeles TV mogul,William “Bill” Self, who was president of Twentieth Century-Fox, and responsible for turning the movie M*A*S*H into a hit television series.

In 1997, he sold the book to wealthy American book collector and Lewis Carroll scholar, Jon Lindseth, who is now selling the book at Christie’s.

Alice Liddell was only three years old when she met Lewis Carroll, then aged 24, for the first time on April 25, 1856.

Carroll photographed Alice and her sisters, Lorina and Edith, played croquet with them, invented and played other games with them in the nursery, told them stories and took them on river picnics at Oxford.

On one of these picnics, on July 4,1862, Carroll invented the story of Alice In Wonderland.

The real Alice (Liddell) pleaded with Carroll to write Alice’s adventures down for her.

Alice married wealthy former England and Hampshire cricketer Reginald Hargreaves at Westminster Abbey on September 15,1880.

In 1901, at their home, Cuffnells Park, Lyndhurst.

Reginald Hargreaves died in 1926 and two years later Alice sold the manuscript booklet of Alice’s Adventures and other books and memorabilia Lewis Carroll had given her.

Alice died on November 15,1934.

Her ashes are buried at Lyndhurst.