Alice Pleasance Liddell

There has been much controversy and debate as to the true inspiration behind Lewis Carroll's famous book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. According to the author's own statement, no real child had inspired him to write the book or come up with the character of Alice. However, subsequent sources suggested that the girl was the daughter of a family friend, Henry Liddell, who was Dean at Christ's Church, Oxford.

Together with his family, Dean Liddell visited Christ's Church in 1856, and Carroll befriended his wife and three daughters. The family was to remain very close to the author during following years, and Carroll formed a close bond with the three girls after the family had moved to Oxford.

Alice Pleasance Liddell was the oldest of the three girls, and her charming and fascinating personality led to Carroll considering her as his favorite. Sources say that the story of Alice in Wonderland was, in fact, born when young Alice asked the author for a story while he had accompanied the family on a boating trip on a summer's day in 1862.

Carroll had been known by his real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson when he first met Alice in 1856, and eight years later he was to become a clergyman and mathematics don at Oxford University. This is when Carroll's first version of the Alice story was presented to a happy young Alice Pleasance Liddell in the form of a 15,000-word manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Underground.

Liddell was known mainly by her husband's name, Hargreaves, when she grew up, but the name Alice Pleasance Liddell continued to be hinted at every time Carroll's most famous works were read. Signs of linking Liddell to the books were in the dialogue between Alice and the Mad Hatter in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as well as in the epilogue of Through the Looking Glass. Presented in the form of a short poem, the epilogue featured Alice Liddell's full name spelled through the first letter of each line.