Lewis Carroll’s Alice books have been influencing artists for more than 140 years. Laura Davis peers into Wonderland at Tate Liverpool to find out why

IN THE most famous photograph of Alice Liddell, the girl is a barefoot urchin with one hand cupped as if begging for alms. In truth, of course, she was nothing of the sort – the daughter of a well-to-do Oxford dean transformed by a dress of rags.

As so often with Lewis Carroll’s creative endeavours, reality and appearance were not the same thing.

Whether in the form of a beaming cat, whose grin vanishes long after he does, or a baby that turns into a pig, nothing is ever exactly what it seems.

His writing is packed with mysteries that extend into his life. Why, for example, after his death, did his family tear out a section of his diaries? Was it to conceal a terrible secret or simply out of a desire for privacy.

All these elements have contributed to the ongoing fascination with Lewis Carroll, particularly his story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which has captured the imagination of children and adults since the first day he related it, during a July picnic on the River Isis.

“I am just making it up as I go along,” the Daresbury-born mathematician told his friend and Trinity College Oxford associate, Robinson Duckworth, at the time.

Next summer, it will be 150 years since he told the rapt Liddell children of the little girl who took a tumble down a rabbit hole and just happened to share one of their names.

Yet the book’s hold – on other writers, musicians and most particularly on artists – remains tight.