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Alice Liddell biography. Real Alice

Alice Pleasance Liddell (May 4, 1852 – November 15, 1934) was the prototype for the character Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Biography

Alice Liddell was the fourth child of Henry Liddell, a classical philologist, dean of one of the colleges at Oxford and co-author of the famous Liddell-Scott Greek dictionary. Alice had two older brothers who died of scarlet fever in 1853, an older sister, Lorina, and six other younger siblings.

After Alice's birth, her father was appointed Dean of Christ Church College, and in 1856 the Liddell family moved to Oxford. Alice soon met Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He became a close family friend in later years.

Alice grew up in the company of two sisters - Lorina was three years older, and Edith was two years younger. On holidays, together with the whole family, they vacationed on the west coast of North Wales at the Penmorfa country house, now the Gogarth Abbey Hotel.

Creation of Alice in Wonderland

On July 4, 1862, on a boat trip, Alice Liddell asked her friend Charles Dodgson to write a story for her and her sisters Edith and Laurina. Dodgson, who had had to tell stories to Dean Liddell's children before, making up events and characters as he went, readily agreed. This time he told the sisters about the adventures of a little girl in the Underground Country, where she ended up after falling into the hole of the White Rabbit. The main character was very reminiscent of Alice (and not only in name), and some minor characters - her sisters Lorina and Edith. Alice Liddell liked the story so much that she asked the narrator to write it down. Dodgson promised, but still had to be reminded several times. Finally, he complied with Alice's request and presented her with a manuscript called Alice's Adventures Underground. Later, the author decided to rewrite the book. To do this, in the spring of 1863, he sent it to his friend George MacDonald for review. New details and illustrations by John Tenniel have also been added to the book. Dodgson presented a new version of Dodgson's book to his favorite for Christmas 1863. In 1865, Dodgson published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The second book, Alice Through the Looking-Glass, came out six years later, in 1871. Both tales, which are well over 100 years old, are still popular today, and a handwritten copy that Dodgson once gave to Alice Liddell is kept in the British Library.

Writer Philip Jose Farmer's sci-fi pentalogy Riverworld features a character named Alice Liddell Hargreaves. The text of the first novel of the pentalogy mentions that at the age of eighty she was awarded the Honorary Diploma of Columbia University for the important role she played in the creation of Mr. Dodgson's famous book.

Alice Pleasance Liddell (eng. Alice Pleasance Liddell; May 4, 1852 - November 16, 1934) - the prototype of the character Alice from the book "Alice in Wonderland" (as well as one of the prototypes of the heroine in the book "Through the Looking Glass").

Date of Birth:
May 4, 1852
Place of Birth:
Westminster, London, England, British Empire
A country:
Great Britain
Date of death:
November 16, 1934 (aged 82)
A place of death:
Westerham, Kent, England, British Empire
Father:
Henry George Lidell
Mother:
Lorina Hanna Lidell (Rive)
Spouse:
Reginald Jervis Hargreaves
Children:
Alan Niveton Hargreaves
Leopold Reginald "Rex" Hargreaves
Caryl Liddell Hargreaves

Biography

Alice Liddell was the fourth child of Henry Liddell (February 6, 1811 - January 18, 1898) - a classical philologist, dean of one of the colleges in Oxford and co-author of the famous Liddell-Scott Greek dictionary - and his wife Loreena Hannah Liddell (née Reeve) ( March 3, 1826 - June 25, 1910). Parents chose a name for the baby for a long time. There were two options: Alice or Marina. The parents found the name "Alice" more appropriate.

Alice at age 8, 1860, photo by Lewis Carroll

Alice had two older brothers - Edward Harry (September 6, 1847 - June 14, 1911) and James Arthur Charles (December 28, 1850 - November 27, 1853, died of scarlet fever) - and an older sister, Loreena Charlotte (May 11, 1849 - October 29, 1930 ). After Alice, Henry and Laurina had 6 more children:

Edith Mary (1854 - June 26, 1876);
Rhoda Carolina Ann (1859 - May 19, 1949);
Albert Edward Arthur (1863 - May 28, 1863);
Violet Constance (March 10, 1864 – December 9, 1927);
Frederick Francis (June 7, 1865 – March 19, 1950);
Lionel Charles (May 22, 1868 – March 21, 1942).
Alice was very close to Edith and Frederick. After Alice's birth, her father, who had previously been Headmaster of Westminster School, was appointed Dean of Christ Church College, and in 1856 the Liddell family moved to Oxford. Alice soon met Charles Luthwidge Dodgson, who ran into her family on April 25, 1856, while photographing the cathedral. He became a close family friend in later years.

Alice grew up mainly in the company of Laurina and Edith. On holidays, together with the whole family, they vacationed on the west coast of north Wales at the Penmorpha country house (now the Hogarth Abbey Hotel) on the West Coast of Llandudno in North Wales.

Many wonderful artists studied with Alice's father, he was a friend of the royal family. Alice's adolescence and youth coincided with the heyday of the work of the Pre-Raphaelites (the forerunners of modernity). She was engaged in drawing, and painting lessons were given to her by John Ruskin, the famous artist and the most influential English art critic of the 19th century. Ruskin found great abilities in her, she made several copies of his paintings, as well as paintings by his friend William Turner, the great English painter. Later, Alice posed for Julia Margaret Cameron, a photographer, also close to the Pre-Raphaelites, whose work is attributed to the golden age of English photography.

According to some reports, Mr. Dodgson approached Alice's parents with a request to allow him to ask for her hand when she grows up. However, there is no exact data on this. It is possible that this is part of the "myth of Lewis Carroll and Alice", which arose later. On the page dedicated to the writer, you can read more about the myth. Another “myth” is also known: in her youth, Alice and her sisters went to travel around Europe and on this trip they met Prince Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria, when he lived in Christ Church. According to the "myth" Leopold fell in love with Alice, but the evidence for this fact is thin. The fact that the Liddell sisters dated him is real, but contemporary biographers of Leopold believe that there is a strong possibility that he was infatuated with her sister Edith (although Leopold named his first daughter Alice). In any case, Leopold was among the bearers of Edith's coffin at her funeral on June 30, 1876 (she died on June 26 from measles or peritonitis (preserved data differ)).

On 15 September 1880, at Westminster Abbey, Alice married the cricketer Reginald Hargreaves (13 October 1852 – 13 February 1926), who was a student of Dr. Dodgson. From him, she gave birth to three sons - Alan Niveton Hargreaves (October 25, 1881 - May 9, 1915), Leopold Reginald "Rex" Hargreaves (January 1883 - September 25, 1916) and Caryl Liddell Hargreaves (1887 - November 26, 1955) (there is a version, that he was named after Carroll, which the Liddells denied). Alan and Leopold died during the First World War during the fighting in France: Alan died on the battlefield and was buried in Flerbe, Reginald died of his wounds and was buried in Gilmont. In marriage, Alice was an ordinary housewife and became the first president of the Women's Institute at the village of Emery Don.

She last met Charles Dodgson in 1891, when she and her sisters visited him in Oxford.

After her death, Alice's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and the ashes were interred in the churchyard of St Michael's Cathedral and All Angels' Cathedral, Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

A plaque next to Alice Liddell Hargreaves' real name is permanently engraved with "Alice from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland".

Creation of Alice in Wonderland

On July 4, 1862, on a boat trip, Alice Liddell asked her friend Charles Dodgson to write a story for her and her sisters Edith and Laurina. Dodgson, who had had to tell Liddell's children stories before, making up events and characters as he went, readily agreed. This time he told the sisters about the adventures of a little girl in the Underground Country, where she ended up after falling into the hole of the White Rabbit. The main character was very reminiscent of Alice (and not only in name), and some minor characters - her sisters Lorina and Edith. Alice Liddell liked the story so much that she asked the narrator to write it down. Dodgson promised, but still had to be reminded several times. Finally, he complied with Alice's request and presented her with a manuscript called Alice's Adventures Underground. Later, the author decided to rewrite the book. To do this, in the spring of 1863, he sent it to his friend George MacDonald for review. New details and illustrations by John Tenniel have also been added to the book. Dodgson presented the new version of the book to his favorite for Christmas 1863. In 1865, Dodgson published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The second book, Alice Through the Looking Glass, came out six years later, in 1871. Both tales, which are already well over a hundred years old, are still popular today.

After her husband's death in 1926, Alice auctioned off a handwritten copy of Alice's Underground Adventure (the original title of the tale) given to her by Dodgson to pay the utility bills at her home. The Sotheby's auction estimated its value at 15,400 pounds and, ultimately, on the centenary of the birth of Dodgson at Columbia University, it was sold to one of the founders of the Victor Talking Machine Company record company, Eldridge R. Johnson (80-year-old Alice was personally present at this ceremony). After Johnson's death, the book was purchased by a consortium of American bibliophiles. Today the manuscript is kept in the British Library.

On May 4, 1852, in England, the girl Alice was born into the Liddell family. She was destined to go down in history as the prototype of Alice in Wonderland - the heroine of the fairy tale created by Lewis Carroll (the literary pseudonym of the mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Alice Liddell was the fourth child of Henry Liddell, a classical philologist, dean of one of the colleges at Oxford and co-author of the famous Liddell-Scott Greek dictionary, and his wife Loreena Hannah Liddell. Parents chose a name for the baby for a long time. We settled on Alice, considering this name more suitable. Alice had two older brothers - Harry and Arthur, who died of scarlet fever in 1853, an older sister, Laurina, and six more younger brothers and sisters. Alice was very close to the younger Edith. Lorina and Edith are introduced as minor characters in Alice in Wonderland.

In early 1856, Henry Liddell received an offer to take the post of dean at Oxford. He did not keep himself waiting long with an answer, and on February 25 the Liddell family set off for Christ Church.

At the time, Carroll was working as a mathematics teacher. From the library window, where he liked to spend his time, there was a beautiful view of the lawn and flower garden in front of the new dean's house, where children often played.

On April 25, 1856, Alice met Lewis Carroll. That day, he went down to the garden with his friend Reginald Southey to photograph the cathedral. In the garden, as usual, the dean's children were running around, among whom was little Alice. Lewis decided to photograph the children, but it was not so easy. They ran a race and were not going to stop their fun. But Carroll knew how to communicate with children: he used to be easily managed with seven sisters. He soon became friends with the Liddell children.

They enjoyed playing with the young teacher. Carroll often arranged joint tea parties, invented various fun games, walked with the children in the park and went boating.

On July 4, 1862, Lewis Carroll and his friend Robinson Duckworth took a boat up the Thames in the company of Henry Lidell's three daughters: thirteen-year-old Lorina, ten-year-old Alice, and eight-year-old Edith. This day, as the English poet Wystan Hugh Auden would later say, "is as memorable in the history of literature as July 4 is in the history of America."

The walk began at Folly Bridge near Oxford and ended five miles later in the village of Godstow with tea. Throughout the journey, Carroll told his bored companions the story of a little girl, Alice, who went in search of adventure.

The girls liked the story and Alice asked Carroll to record the story for her. He began writing the manuscript the day after the trip. Subsequently, the writer noted that the journey down the rabbit hole was improvisational in nature and was, in fact, "a desperate attempt to come up with something new."

Alice Liddell wrote: "I think that the story of Alice originates on that summer day when the sun was so hot that we landed in a clearing, leaving the boat, just to take cover in the shade. We settled down under a fresh haystack. There the whole trio started an old song: "Tell a story" - and this is how a delightful fairy tale began.

During the next boat trip, it started to rain and everyone got very wet, which became the basis for the second chapter - "Sea of Tears". On that day, the writer developed the plot and story of Alice in more detail, and in November, Carroll seriously took up the manuscript.

To make the story more natural, he examined the behavior of the animals mentioned in the book. According to Carroll's diaries, in the spring of 1863 he showed the unfinished manuscript of the story to his friend and adviser George MacDonald, whose children liked it very much. Macdonald, like his other friend Henry Kingsley, would subsequently be advised to publish the book. Carroll included his own sketches in the manuscript, but used illustrations by John Tenniel in the published version.

The first manuscript of Alice's Adventures Underground was handwritten by Lewis Carroll for Alice. He finished it in February 1863, and sent it to Alice, at the rector's house, only in November 1864. The manuscript, consisting of only four chapters, was provided with thirty-seven drawings by the author and a photograph of Alice at the age of 7 at the end (first there was a drawing) and was called "Alice's Adventures Underground - a Christmas present for my sweet girl in memory of a summer day."

Between these dates, Carroll entered into negotiations with Clarendon publishers in Oxford to publish it at his own expense. However, before that he prepared a new version of the manuscript, supplemented. For example, such famous scenes as meeting with the Duchess, meeting with the Cheshire Cat and the Crazy Tea Party were added, which were not in the original version. Barely outlined in the manuscript, the theme of the trial of Knave was widely developed. As a result, in 1865, a fairy tale with drawings by John Tenniel was published under the well-known name "Alice in Wonderland".

Since November 1856, Carroll begins to experience a hostile attitude towards himself from Mrs. Liddell. Mrs. Liddell's dissatisfaction with the relationship between Carroll and her daughters grew more and more, and in 1864 she forbade any walks and meetings of girls with the writer and destroyed all his letters to Alice. In the 70s, relations with Alice's parents finally deteriorated. Carroll also damaged his relationship with Henry Liddell when he spoke ironically about the architectural improvements in the college that Alice's father wanted to implement.

Regarding the existing hypothesis that Carroll asked the Liddells for Alice's hand, the writer's biographer Morton Cohen writes: “I changed my point of view on Carroll's relationship with Alice when in 1969 a photocopy of the writer's diary entries fell into my hands. As I began to read them - and these are the complete diary entries given to me by the Carroll family, and not those published passages from which twenty-five to forty percent of the original text is removed - I discovered countless fragments and passages of great importance. It was these details that the writer's family wanted to hide from prying eyes. Most of the photographs taken by Carroll were destroyed, and no nude photographs survived at all.
When I first encountered the unpublished pages of the diary, I noticed that there was another dimension to Lewis Carroll's "romanticism." Of course, it is very difficult to come to terms with the idea that a strict-minded, well-known churchman of the Victorian era could like little girls, and like them to such an extent that he had a desire to ask for the hand of one or even several of them ... I firmly believe that that he would have been happier in marriage than if he had remained single, and it seems to me that the tragedy of his life lay precisely in the fact that he could not marry.

Alice's adolescence and youth coincided with the heyday of the Pre-Raphaelites' creativity. Many wonderful artists studied with Alice's father, he was a friend of the royal family. She was engaged in drawing, and painting lessons were given to her by John Ruskin, the famous artist and the most influential English art critic of the 19th century. Ruskin found great abilities in Alice, she made several copies of his paintings, as well as paintings by his friend William Turner, the great English painter. Later, Alice posed for Julia Margaret Cameron, a photographer, also close to the Pre-Raphaelites, whose work is attributed to the golden age of English photography.

In 1870, Carroll took the last photograph of Alice - then already a young woman - who came to a meeting with the writer, accompanied by her mother. Two meager notes made by Carroll already in his old age tell of the writer's sad meetings with the one that was once his muse.

One of the last meetings took place in 1888, Alice was accompanied by her husband - Mr. Hargreaves. Carroll writes the following: "It was not easy to put her new face and my old memories of her into one whole in my head: her strange appearance today with the one who was once so close and beloved "Alice"".

On September 15, 1880, at Westminster Abbey, 28-year-old Alice married Reginald Hargreaves, who was a student of Dr. Dodgson. He was famous for being one of the best shooters and cricketers in the county. She gave birth to three sons from him - Alan, Leopold (both died in the First World War) and Caryl (there was a version that he was named after Carroll, but the Liddells denied this). In marriage, Alice was an ordinary housewife and became the first president of the Women's Institute at the village of Emery Don.

After the death of her husband in 1926, Alice, in order to pay the utility bills of her house, put up for auction a handwritten copy of Alice's Adventures Under the Earth, presented to her by Carroll. A Sotheby's auction valued it at £15,400 and it was eventually sold on the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth at Columbia University to Eldridge R. Johnson, co-founder of the Victor Talking Machine Company. 80-year-old Alice personally attended this ceremony. After Carroll's death, the book was purchased by a consortium of American bibliophiles. Today the manuscript is kept in the British Library.

At the age of 80, Alice Liddell Hargreaves received a certificate of honor from Columbia University for the important role she played in the creation of Carroll's famous book.

Alice Liddell died on November 16, 1934 at the age of 82. After her death, her body was cremated, and the ashes were buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Michael and All Angels. On the plaque next to the real name of Alice Liddell Hargreaves is forever engraved: "Alice from Lewis Carroll's fairy tale" Alice in Wonderland "".

09.04.2016 0 10551

Today many name Alice Liddell won't say anything. A clue may be the inscription carved on the gravestone of this woman: Grave of Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves, Alice from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Alice Liddell

The girl Alice Liddell, for whom Carroll wrote a fairy tale about her journey through the underground country, where she got through the rabbit hole, lived to be 82 years old. And she died 36 years after the death of the person who immortalized her.

Until now, there are disputes about what kind of relationship they had. Guesses build a variety of - including a very dirty property.

Meeting in the garden

In April 1856, the children of Henry Liddell, dean of a college in the English university city of Oxford, went for a walk in the garden. On that spring day, there was also a young mathematics teacher, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who sometimes published literary works under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

He was going to photograph the cathedral. Dodgson, a mathematician and author of works on this science, was much more interested in the humanitarian field of life: photography, writing, poetry. Looking ahead, let's say that for a quarter of a century he taught in college not at all what was of real interest to him.

So, photography - at that time, an innovation - in 1856 was the main hobby of a 24-year-old mathematician, whose lectures students considered the most boring in the world.

In 1856, Mr. Liddell's family had only 5 children, Alice being the fourth oldest. (Later, five more babies were born.)

Lewis Carroll

Carroll immediately hit on the idea of photographing the Liddell girls. It was girls - he adored them. And somehow he wrote in his diary: "I love children (but not boys)." Why only girls? Biographers of the writer have been wrestling with this question for decades.

Most come to a simple conclusion: Dodgson had 7 sisters and only 3 brothers! He has been accustomed to dealing with girls since childhood.

A young teacher asked the Liddells for permission to photograph their children. The parents agreed. Thanks to their consent, images of Liddell Jr. have been preserved for history.

An unusual child?

In 1856, Alice was 4 years old. What exactly did this baby attract the attention of a mathematician-photographer? After all, if he loved girls so much, why didn't he pay attention to her younger or older sister?

He must have been impressed by the stubborn expression on her face. Or maybe bright brown eyes... Who knows?

Photos of seven-year-old Alice, taken by Lewis Carroll, have come down to us. On one of them, the girl looks quite decent: she is sitting next to a flower pot in a white dress.

And on the other she is barefoot, dressed in rags - apparently, depicts a savage or a beggar. It was this photograph, dated 1859, that led researchers to think about Carroll's non-Platonic intentions...

But back to 1856. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson quickly became a friend of the Liddell family. His daughters were thrilled by him - he was ready to spend almost all his free time with girls. They frolicked in the park, fooled around, rode a boat. About one of these boat trips, Carroll wrote an acrostic, the first letters of the lines of which are the words: Alice Pleasence Liddell (the full name of the baby). Here is the beginning of this poem, which was included in the book "Through the Looking Glass":

Ah, what a bright day it was!
Boat, sun, shine and shadow,
And lilacs bloomed everywhere.
The sisters listen to the story
And the river carries us away.

On the same walk, Carroll began to tell Alice and her sisters about the girl's adventures in a magical land. The passengers of that boat - thirteen-year-old Lorina, ten-year-old Alice and eight-year-old Edith - asked their older friend not to be silent. His favorite Alice demanded to invent a story in which there would be "more nonsense and inventions." The main character was, of course, Alice.

But there was room for her sisters, too. Lorina turned into a parrot Lori, who convinced everyone of his seniority and intelligence. Edith got the role of Ed the Eaglet. Carroll himself brought out in the form of a Dodo bird - he mocked his own stutter, which prevented him from correctly pronouncing the name Dodgson.

Why did Carroll make Alice the heroine of his book? What attracted him to this particular girl? After all, the Liddells had two other daughters close to her age. Apparently, it was Alice who especially did not want to become an adult. And the writer unmistakably felt it in her. After all, he himself did not have the slightest desire to turn from a boy into an adult man.

The main character of the book is a very unusual girl for that time. She, on the one hand, is well-educated (after all, the daughter of a scientist), on the other hand, Alice is very direct - she asks any questions without hesitation. There is no English stiffness in it!

On that sunny day in 1862, Alice began to beg a friend to write a story about adventures in the Underland (as Wonderland was originally called) in the form of a book.

What Lewis Carroll did...

In 1926, Mrs. Alice Hargreaves sold this handwritten copy of a work for children, which had become a classic by that time, at Sotheby's for £15,400. After the death of her husband, the woman had nothing to pay the bills for the house ...

In 1865, Carroll published the book at his own expense. And she was noticed! Why? The fact is that the story of the adventures of a younger schoolgirl in a non-existent world, full of rubbish and word play, was something absolutely unheard of in English children's literature of the Victorian era. In those days, all works for children were of a Christian-edifying nature. They dealt mainly with the struggle between the good and the even better. And then - such a fantasy ...

What connected them?

The more time passed since the death of Carroll in 1898, the more dirty conjectures were expressed precisely in relation to his friendship with little Alice Liddell. Some researchers spoke directly about the writer's pedophilia. A new surge of discussions on this topic was caused by Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita, published in 1955, about the sexual relationship between an adult man and a young girl.

Almost all of Lewis Carroll's life was spent in the Victorian era. At that time, young girls were considered to be asexual. Did the writer have a different point of view? Yes, he loved photographing naked youngsters who had not yet taken shape. He liked to correspond with immature girls.

But there is no evidence that his relationship with the children - and with Alice Liddell in particular - went beyond talk. Perhaps things would have been different in a different era. But the Victorian era is Victorian because morals were puritanical. And dirty thoughts came to few people's minds. Thank God, no dirt could stick to Carroll and Alice.

How did the relationship between the writer and the very young Miss Liddell end? The way they should have ended: the girl grew up. And Carroll lost all interest in her. Yes, and with a large family of Liddell, he gradually broke up. At first, Lewis did not please Mrs. Liddell.

Some researchers say that a sensitive mother suspected the young man of dirty intentions. But there is no evidence of this: Carroll's diaries for those years have not been preserved. Alice did not say a bad word about her friend.

What happened to her as an adult? It is known that Alice did a little painting. At the age of 28, she married landowner and cricketer Reginald Hargreaves. Became a housewife. She gave birth to three sons from him. Her two older children were killed in the First World War. Alice lived in the countryside...

From adult photographs, a young pretty woman with a harsh expression is looking at us. Nothing special: it's hard to guess the girl from Wonderland.

The last time the sisters, whose maiden name was Liddell, met with Lewis Carroll in 1891 - 7 years before his death. It was a meeting of old friends.

Alice Hargreaves died in 1934. 2 years before her death, she received an honorary diploma from Columbia University for inspiring the writer to create an immortal book.

Maria KONYUKOVA

"Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" are one of the most beautiful, phantasmagoric, mysterious works for children. And who knows, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (known to us under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll) would have had the idea to create these works if a little girl, the daughter of his friend, the charming Alice Liddell, had not appeared in his life ...

Alice Pleasence Liddell was born May 4, 1852. It was she who became the prototype of the character Alice from the book "Alice in Wonderland" (as well as one of the prototypes of the heroine in the book "Through the Looking Glass").

Alice or Marina?

Alice Liddell was the fourth child of Henry Liddell, a classical philologist, dean of one of the colleges at Oxford and co-author of the famous Liddell-Scott Greek dictionary, and his wife Lorin Hannah Liddell (née Reeve). Parents chose a name for the baby for a long time. There were two options: Alice or Marina. But the parents settled on Alice, considering this name more suitable.

Alice had two older brothers - Harry (born in 1847) and Arthur (born in 1850) - who died of scarlet fever in 1853, an older sister, Lorina (born in 1849), and six more younger brothers and sisters, including her younger sister Edith (born 1854), with whom she was very close.

Meeting with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

After Alice's birth, her father, who had previously been headmaster of Westminster School, was appointed dean of Christ Church, and in 1856 the Liddell family moved to Oxford. Alice soon met Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who ran into her family on April 25, 1856, while photographing the cathedral. He became a close family friend in later years.

Lewis Carroll was a bachelor. In the past, he was considered not to be friends with members of the opposite sex, with an exception for actress Ellen Terry.

“Carroll’s greatest joy was friendship with little girls. “I love children (but not boys),” he once wrote. ... Girls (unlike boys) seemed to him surprisingly beautiful without clothes. Sometimes he painted or photographed them naked - of course , with the permission of their mothers. ... Carroll himself considered his friendship with girls completely innocent; there is no reason to doubt that it was so. Moreover, in the numerous memories that his little girlfriends later left about him, there is not a hint of any or violation of decency," Martin Gardner said about it.

In late 19th century Victorian England, girls under 14 were considered asexual. Carroll's friendship with them was, from the point of view of the then morality, a completely innocent whim. On the other hand, too close contact with a young woman (especially in private) was strictly condemned. This could force Carroll to declare his acquaintances of women and girls little girls, and they themselves to underestimate their age.

Alice grew up in the company of two sisters - Lorina was three years older, and Edith was two years younger. On holidays, together with the whole family, they vacationed on the west coast of north Wales at the Penmorpha country house (now the Gogarth Abbey Hotel) on the West Coast of Llandudno in North Wales.

The history of the creation of "Alice in Wonderland"

On Friday, July 4, 1862, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and his friend Robinson Duckworth rode a boat up the River Thames in the company of the three daughters of Oxford Vice-Chancellor Henry Liddell: thirteen-year-old Lorina Charlotte Liddell, ten-year-old Alice Pleasence Liddell, and eight-year-old Edith Mary Liddell. This day, as the English poet Wystan Hugh Auden would later say, "is as memorable in the history of literature as July 4 is in the history of America."

The walk began at Folly Bridge near Oxford and ended five miles later in the village of Godstow with tea. Throughout the journey, Dodgson told his bored companions the story of a little girl, Alice, who went in search of adventure.

The girls liked the story, and Alice asked Dodgson to record the story for her. Dodgson began writing the manuscript the day after the trip. Subsequently, he noted that the journey down the rabbit hole was improvisational and was, in fact, "a desperate attempt to come up with something new."

On June 17, 1862, Dodgson, in the company of his sisters Fanny and Elizabeth, Aunt Lutwidge and the girls, again went for a walk on another boat to Nunham. That day it started to rain and everyone got very wet, which became the basis for the second chapter - "Sea of Tears". During this walk, the writer developed the plot and story of Alice in more detail, and in November, Carroll began to seriously work on the manuscript.

To make the story more natural, he examined the behavior of the animals mentioned in the book. According to Dodgson's diaries, in the spring of 1863 he showed the unfinished manuscript of the story to his friend and adviser George MacDonald, whose children greatly enjoyed it. Macdonald, like his other friend Henry Kingsley, would subsequently be advised to publish the book. Carroll included his own sketches in the manuscript, but used illustrations by John Tenniel in the published version.

On November 26, 1864, Dodgson presented Alice Liddell with his work entitled "Alice's Adventures Underground", subtitled "A Christmas Gift to Dear Girl in Memory of a Summer's Day", consisting of only four chapters, to which he attached a photograph of Alice at the age of 7 .

In the preface to his translation of Carroll's tale, B. Zakhoder cites an excerpt from "Lewis Carroll's letter to a theater director who decided to put the tale about Alice on stage":

"... What did I see you, Alice, in my imagination? What are you? Loving is first of all: loving and tender; gentle, like a doe, and loving, like a dog the earth of love is purer and more perfect); and yet - courteous: polite and friendly with everyone, with great and small, with mighty and funny, with kings and worms, as if you yourself were a royal daughter in an embroidered gold outfit. And yet - trusting, ready to believe in the most impossible fiction and accept it with the boundless confidence of a dreamer; and, finally, curious, desperately curious and cheerful with that cheerfulness that is given only in childhood, when the whole world is new and beautiful and when grief and sin are just words, empty sounds that mean nothing!"

As time passed, in 1928 Alice Liddell was forced to sell the manuscript at Sotheby's for £15,400. The book was bought by the American collector A. S. Rosenbach. In 1946, the handwritten fairy tale again goes to auction, where it is valued at $100,000. At the initiative of L. G. Evans, an employee of the US Library of Congress, a collection of donations to the fund for the purchase of the book was announced. In 1948, when the required amount was collected, a group of American philanthropists donated it to the British Library in gratitude for the role of the British people in the Second World War, where it is kept to this day.

"Alice in the Wonderland"

Alice Through the Looking-Glass is an 1871 children's book by English mathematician and author Lewis Carroll as a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In this case, Alice has not one, but two prototypes with that name. The first prototype was the same Alice Liddell, the second prototype related to the role of Alice, unfortunately, is unknown.

Alice artist, Alice model

Another “myth” is also known: in her youth, Alice and her sisters went to travel around Europe and on this trip they met Prince Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria, when he lived in Christ Church. According to the "myth" Leopold fell in love with Alice, but the evidence for this fact is thin. The fact that the Liddell sisters dated him is real, but contemporary biographers of Leopold believe that there is a strong possibility that he was infatuated with her sister Edith.

Marriage and children

On September 15, 1880, Alice married Mr. Reginald Hargreaves, who was a student of Dr. Dodgson. From him, she gave birth to three sons - Alan Niveton Hargreaves, Leopold Reginald "Rex" Hargreaves (both died in the First World War) and Caryl Liddell Hargreaves (there is a version that he was named after Carroll, but the Liddells themselves deny this), and one daughter - Rose Liddell Hargreaves.

Last meeting

She last met Charles Dodgson in 1891, when she and her sisters visited him in Oxford. After 7 years, January 14, 1898 in Guildford, Surrey, Charles Dodzhonson died. Alice Liddell herself died on November 15, 1934 at the age of 82.

Planet Liddell

In the novel "Maximus Thunder. Escape from Eden ”by Lilia Kim, one of the main characters is Alice Liddell, an agent of the Bureau of Information Security.

The minor planet 17670 Liddell is named after Alice Liddell.

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