Alice Liddell was the middle daughter born to Henry George Liddell, Dean of Christ Church at Oxford. Alice and her sisters, Edith and Lorina, met Lewis Carroll for the first time on April 25, 1856, while he and his friend were setting up to photograph Christ Church Cathedral from the garden of the Dean’s residence.
Lewis Carroll soon became a very close family friend of the Liddells. Alice and her sisters became frequent models for Carroll’s photography, and he took the children on outings often.
Carroll and the Rev. Robinson Duckworth took the girls on a boat trip to the Isis on July 4th, 1862. Alice eventually shared that as they took lunch she begged Carroll to tell them a story.
Carroll in his version of events shared that “in a desperate attempt without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,” he took his heroine on a journey “straight down a rabbit hole.”
Alice eventually convinced Carroll to write the story and on November 26, 1864, Carroll gave her a hand-illustrated manuscript he called, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was eventually published a year later, and Alice Liddell got immortalized as the inspiration for Carroll’s main character. However, Alice Liddell grew up.
By the time other parts of the novel were published, Alice had turned 20 and the relationship the Liddells shared with Carroll had waned. It’s alleged that the sequel is a fond farewell to Alice as she enters adulthood.
In 1932, Alice travelled to the United States to receive an honorary doctorate from Columbia University in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Carroll’s birth. She died in 1934, two years after.
There’s very little resemblance of Alice Liddell to the main character of the novel, supporting the claim that the character was wholly imaginary and not after a real child.
