Alice Liddell
Alice Pleasance Liddell (born May 4, 1852 in Westminster , † November 16, 1934 in Westerham ) was the model for the heroine in Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland .
Life
Alice Liddell was a daughter of the Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford , Henry George Liddell (1811–1898), and his wife Lorina Hanna, née Reeve (1826–1910). Alice was her fourth child. She had two brothers and a sister who were older than her. Her second brother, Arthur, later died of scarlet fever . She had six younger siblings, including her sister Edith, with whom she was very closely related. One of her younger brothers died as a toddler.
When Alice was born, her father was the principal of Westminster School but was soon transferred to Christ Church in Oxford. In 1856 the family moved to Oxford. Shortly after this move, on April 25, 1856, Alice first saw Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - better known by his stage name Lewis Carroll , who taught and lived as a college math tutor . He met the Liddell family while photographing the cathedral.
Alice grew up mainly with her two closest sisters: Lorina, who was three years older, and Edith, who was two years younger. The sisters were tutored by a governess in the house within the college walls and received additional tuition in foreign languages and music, as well as arts from John Ruskin .
As a young woman, Alice went on an extensive trip to Europe with Lorina and Edith, as was quite common for families of her class at the time. Two years later, she met a stroke of fate when her younger sister Edith died of measles shortly before they were married . At the time, Prince Leopold , Queen Victoria's youngest son and a student at Christ Church College, showed a romantic interest in Alice. It is believed that Alice's grief over the loss of her sister cooled her relationship with Leopold. Other speculations are that Leopold was dissuaded by his mother from cultivating a relationship with a commoner.
In any case, Alice married at the age of 28 on September 15, 1880 in Westminster Abbey Reginald Gervis Hargreaves (1852-1926), who had also studied at Christ Church College, and moved with him to Cuffnells , a representative estate in Lyndhurst . She ran the household with numerous servants, held balls, drew, painted and made wood carvings and took care of raising children. The couple had three sons: Alan Knyveton Hargreaves, Leopold Reginald "Rex" Hargreaves (named after his godfather Prince Leopold), who both died in World War I , and Caryl Liddell Hargreaves (1887–1955), who survived and later joined Madeleine Hanbury- Tracy had three children.
After her husband's death in 1926, she continued to lead an active social and cultural life, but it became increasingly difficult to sustain Cuffnells. So expensive was the upkeep that Alice decided it was necessary to sell her copy of Alice's Underground Adventure in 1928 . The manuscript fetched nearly four times the minimum bid set by auction house Sotheby’s and sold for £ 15,400 . It became the property of Eldridge R. Johnson and was exhibited at Columbia University in 1932 on Carroll's 100th birthday . Alice, now 80 years old, was invited as an honorary speaker at the celebration in New York and was awarded an honorary doctorate of Doctor of Letters . Alice Hargreaves Liddell died in Westerham in 1934 at the age of 82 . Her grave is in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels Parish Church in Lyndhurst.
After Johnson died, the book was bought by a group of American bibliophiles and given to the British people in 1948 "in recognition of the courage of the British to face Hitler before America went to war". The manuscript is now in the UK National Library.
Alice's relationship with Lewis Carroll
Alice spent much of her childhood in the company of her sisters and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who became a frequent visitor to the family soon after they first met. He often took the girls on boat trips and picnics in the picturesque surroundings of Oxford and told them fantastic stories to pass the time.
She was a frequent model for Dodgson's second hobby, photography. Photos from this period show Alice disguised as a beggar girl in ragged clothes or Alice and Lorina in oriental costume. All these years, Alice has been his clear favorite. She was the heroine of his stories, while Lorina and Edith only played supporting roles.
In the summer of 1863, when Alice Lidell was eleven, Dodgson's close relationship with Alice came to an abrupt end. There is no record of how this came about as Dodgson's heirs later destroyed the relevant page of his diary. Dodgson himself did not mention Alice again in his diary until the following December, and in the summer of 1864 the children were forbidden from further excursions on the river. It is known from statements made by Alice in late life that her mother had removed all letters from Dodgson's pen to young Alice.
Alice in Wonderland
.jpg)
Many of the characters and events in the book were based on people, places, and events in Oxford that Alice was familiar with, such as the dodo she knew from her particularly valued visits to the newly opened University Museum.
On July 4, 1862, while on a boat trip on the Thames from Oxford to Godstow to have a picnic, Alice asked Charles Dodgson to tell her and her two sisters a story. While Rev. Robinson Duckworth rowed the boat, Dodgson delighted the children with fantastic stories about a girl and her adventures after she fell into a rabbit hole. It was not by chance that this girl was called Alice. The story was similar to others he had previously devised for the sisters, but this time there was such a difference that Alice asked Mr. Dodgson to write it down for her. She kept asking him, and eventually he wrote it down, illustrated it, and on November 26, 1864, gave Alice the manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Underground .
In 1865 he published the story in an expanded printed version with illustrations by John Tenniel under the title Alice in Wonderland . A sequel, Alice Behind the Mirrors , appeared in 1871.
Comparison with the fictional Alice
Alice Liddell served as a suggestion for some properties of the character "Alice". However, she was by no means the model for the illustrations in the Alice books, as the draftsman Tenniel never met her. Rather, it was based on a photograph of a little girl named Mary Hilton Badcock, which Lewis Carroll had sent to the draftsman.
Others
The Life of Alice Liddell was filmed in 1985 by director Gavin Millar under the title The Real Life of Alice in Wonderland . It deals with the relationship between Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll, as well as the genesis of the books. Coral Browne played the aged Alice Liddell and Amelia Shankley played the young Alice. Ian Holm played Lewis Carroll in flashbacks.
Alice Liddell is one of the main characters of three science fiction novels from the River World cycle by the American author Philip José Farmer : The River World of Time (Piper 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-26657-4 ), The Magical Labyrinth ( Heyne 1981, ISBN 3453307399 ) and The Gods of the River World (Heyne 1986, ISBN 3453312376 ).
Katie Roiphe wrote the novel Still She Haunts Me about Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson in 2001 (German Mysterious Alice: the story of Lewis Carroll and little Alice , 2002).
In the pedophile movement , April 25th is celebrated annually as Alice Day . On this day in 1856, Liddell and Carroll are said to have met for the first time.
literature
- Katie Roiphe: Enigmatic Alice: the story of Lewis Carroll and little Alice , Hamburg; Vienna: Europa-Verlag 2002, ISBN 978-3-203-81561-9 .
- David R. Slavitt: Alice about everything: the love of children of the ingenious storyteller Lewis Carroll; Roman , Frankfurt, M.: Eichborn 2010, series Die Other Bibliothek , ISBN 978-3-8218-6231-6 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Alice Liddell in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Morton N. Cohen : Hargreaves [née Liddell], Alice Pleasance . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press , September 23, 2004, doi : 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 55226 (English).
- ↑ a b c d BBC: Local Lives - Alice Liddell. In: co.uk. www.bbc.co.uk, accessed February 8, 2019 (UK English).
- ↑ Alice Hargreaves | Columbia University Libraries. In: columbia.edu. library.columbia.edu, accessed February 8, 2019 .
- ↑ About Alice Liddell | Alice 150 Years. In: umd.edu. www.lib.umd.edu, accessed February 8, 2019 .
- ↑ Thomas Kleinspehn: Lewis Carroll . In: Rowohlt's monographs . rororo 50478. Rowohlt , Reinbek 1997, ISBN 3-499-50478-2 , p. 77 .
- ^ Cooper Fleishman: Anonymous is targeting every pedophile hub on the Web , The Daily Dot , April 24, 2013
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Liddell, Alice |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Liddell, Alice Pleasance (maiden name); Hargreaves, Alice Pleasance Liddell (married name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English woman, template for the heroine in "Alice in Wonderland" |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 4, 1852 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Westminster (London) |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 16, 1934 |
| Place of death | Westerham (Kent) |