Which real-life girl inspired the character Alice in Wonderland?

Alice Liddell inspired the character Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll first told the story to ten-year-old Alice and her sisters, Lorina and Edith, during a rowing trip on the River Isis near Oxford on 4 July 1862. Alice asked him to write the adventure down, leading to the handwritten manuscript Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which he gave her in 1864.

The fictional Alice was not a strict portrait of Alice Liddell. Carroll later claimed that the character was entirely imaginary, and scholars disagree about how closely the heroine was modeled on her. Some have suggested that Edith Liddell influenced Carroll’s early drawings, which look little like Alice Liddell. Nevertheless, Alice Liddell remains the accepted real-life inspiration because the story was created for her, the heroine shares her name, and Carroll embedded several references to the Liddell family in the books.

A famous example appears at the end of Through the Looking-Glass: the first letters of the poem’s lines spell “Alice Pleasance Liddell.” The real Alice later married Reginald Hargreaves and became known as Alice Liddell Hargreaves.