Alice was published in 1865, three years after Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed in a boat, on 4 July 1862  (this popular date of the "golden afternoon" might be a confusion or even another Alice-tale, for that particular day was cool, cloudy and rainy), up the Isis with the three young daughters of Henry Liddell (the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and Dean of Christ Church):
Lorina Charlotte Liddell (aged 13, born 1849) ("Prima" in the book's prefatory verse);
Alice Pleasance Liddell (aged 10, born 1852) ("Secunda" in the prefatory verse);
Edith Mary Liddell (aged 8, born 1853) ("Tertia" in the prefatory verse).

The girls and Dodgson took another boat trip a month later when he elaborated the plot to the story of Alice, and in November he began working on the manuscript in earnest