Alice Pleasance Liddell first encountered Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on April 25, 1856. She was the middle daughter of Henry George Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church at Oxford. Dodgson, who later adopted the pen name Lewis Carroll, was in the Dean’s garden that day preparing to photograph the cathedral. Alice and her sisters, Edith and Lorina, watched him set up his equipment. This chance meeting sparked a friendship between the mathematician and the children. Over the next few years, the girls frequently posed for his camera and accompanied him on various outings.
The Boat Trip on the Isis
The story of Alice in Wonderland began on a specific summer afternoon. On July 4, 1862, Carroll and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth took the three Liddell sisters on a boating trip up the river Isis. The group stopped to have tea on a shaded bank. Alice asked Carroll to tell them a story to pass the time. He began without a plan, sending his heroine straight down a rabbit hole in a desperate attempt to keep the children entertained. Alice enjoyed the tale so much that she urged him to write it down for her.
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The Gift of the Manuscript
Carroll spent the next two years refining the story. He created an elaborate manuscript titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, complete with his own hand-drawn illustrations. He presented this gift to Alice on November 26, 1864. When the story was published for the general public a year later, the title changed to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice Liddell was immortalized as the inspiration for the character, though her life followed a normal human trajectory. She grew up, and her friendship with Carroll faded. By the time he published the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, she was nearly 20 years old.
Marriage and Tragedy
In 1880, Alice married Reginald Hargreaves, an amateur cricket player. She settled in Lyndhurst, England, and lived as a cultured country lady. She gave birth to three sons, but the family suffered great loss during World War I when two of them were killed in action. Financial struggles followed the death of her husband. To pay the taxes on her estate, Alice decided to sell the original Under Ground manuscript. Sotheby’s auction house sold the book in 1928 for £15,400, a sum nearly four times higher than the initial reserve price.
A Meeting of Muses
The manuscript eventually came into the possession of Eldridge R. Johnson. He displayed it at Columbia University to celebrate the centennial of Lewis Carroll’s birth. Alice traveled to the United States for this exhibition at the age of 80. During this visit, she met Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the brothers who inspired J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. This event united the real-life inspirations for two of literature’s most famous children.
The Manuscript Returns Home
After Johnson died, a group of American bibliophiles purchased the book. They presented it to the British nation to honor Britain’s courage in facing Hitler before the United States entered World War II. The manuscript now resides in the British Library. Alice died in 1934 and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. Her ashes were buried in the graveyard of St Michael and All Angels in Lyndhurst. A plaque marks her resting place with the name “Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves.” Her personal mirror remains on display at the nearby New Forest Heritage Centre.
