ONE of the rarest copies of Lewis Carroll’s classic book, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, has failed to sell at auction.

The first edition copy did not reach its reserve price despite a bid of more than one and a quarter million pounds at Christie’s in New York.

The book had been expected to fetch between two million dollars and three million dollars. The bidding reached 1,800,000 dollars (£1,276,595).

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 at Cuffnells Park, Lyndhurst.

Alice was only three years old when she met Carroll, then aged 24, for the first time on April 25, 1856. He 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 pleaded with Carroll to write down the adventures for her.

She died on November 15,1934, and her ashes are buried at Lyndhurst.

The copy of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland is “excessively rare” because it is one of only 22 known 1865 first edition copies 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.