THE REAL ALICE IN WONDERLAND ...

Lovingly adorned with his own illustrations, Alice's Adventures Underground had been conceived on a summer's day back in 1862, when Lewis Carroll (as he was soon to be known) had spent a day on a boating trip with Edith, Lorina and Alice - the three daughters of Henry George Liddell, the dean of Christ Church college.

Alice was Carroll's favourite. He first met her in the deanery gardens in the April of 1856, and the day was marked out in his diary as one of great significance. Carroll was 24 years old - twenty years older than Alice.

In later years he was to claim that the character of the little girl in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was not based on any living child. But there are many references alluding to Alice Liddell. 

Alice's birthday was May 4th, and during the Mad Hatter's tea party we read -

'Still she haunts me' - Carroll's poem possesses a dreamlike yearning and is filled with poignant memories of that balmy summer's day when he rowed along the river with Alice and her sisters. 

It is a sensitive subject, but Carroll's interest in young girls is also to be found in a collection of photographs he took - many of which the artist destroyed before his death. However, surviving images can still be viewed today. They are held at the National Media Museum, though you may need to telephone to make a prior appointment to view them.

Carroll also destroyed a page from his diary in 1863, after which his close relationship with the Liddell family came a very sudden end. In later years, his own family explained that the page in the diary referred to Mrs Liddell being unhappy at what she assumed to be Carroll's interest in courting a certain Miss Pricket, who was then the children's governess.

It is thought by some that the character of the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass was based upon Miss Pricket, who Carroll described in the following way - 

"The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm; she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the tenth degreee, the concentrated essence of all governesses!" 

So, she was firm and not unkindly, and perhaps he did find her attractive. But when it came to Alice Liddell, he wrote of his disappointment when he met her again in later years, and felt that she had "changed a great deal and hardly for the better."

Despite the loss of her royal love Alice still went on to become a successful and happy society wife. It was only after her husband's death, when she found herself to be in need, that she finally resorted to selling her original copy of Alice's Adventures Underground. 

In 1928 the manuscript was auctioned at Sotheby's. It was sold for £15,400, which was four times the reserve price. 

In 1948, it changed hands again, this time to be purchased by a group of American businessmen, who donated the precious manuscript to the British Museum in Bloomsbury.

In 1932, to mark the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth, Alice visited New York and received an honorary doctorate from Columbia University. The trip proved to be exciting but also very tiring, with a deluge of letters from 'Alice' fans, and intense interest from the media. 

Alice's death soon afterwards, in 1934, was marked by an obituary in The Times. Her ashes are now interred in the family tomb in Lyndhust, in Hampshire, where the following words have been inscribed: The grave of Mrs Reginald Hargreaves, the Alice in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.