A child in the mid-Victorian era, Alice unintentionally goes on an underground adventure after falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland; in the sequel, she steps through a mirror into an alternative world.

Characterized by Carroll as "loving and gentle", "courteous to all", "trustful", and "wildly curious",[1] Alice has been variously seen as clever, well-mannered, and sceptical of authority, although some commentators find more negative aspects of her personality.

At home, she has a significantly older sister, a brother,[6] a pet cat named Dinah, an elderly nurse, and a governess, who teaches her lessons starting at nine in the morning.

[10] When writing on her personality in "Alice on the Stage" (April 1887), Carroll described her as "loving and gentle", "courteous to all", "trustful", and "wildly curious, and with the eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names – empty words signifying nothing!

[11] Others see less positive traits in Alice, writing that she frequently shows unkindness in her conversations with the animals in Wonderland,[12] takes violent action against the character Bill the Lizard by kicking him into the air,[13] and reflects her social upbringing in her lack of sensitivity and impolite replies.

[13] According to Donald Rackin, "In spite of her class- and time-bound prejudices, her frightened fretting and childish, abject tears, her priggishness and self-assured ignorance, her sometimes blatant hypocrisy, her general powerlessness and confusion, and her rather cowardly readiness to abandon her struggles at the ends of the two adventures—[....] many readers still look up to Alice as a mythic embodiment of control, perseverance, bravery, and mature good sense.

[23] His illustrations drew influence from the Pre-Raphaelite painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Hughes, whose painting The Lady with the Lilacs (1863) he visually alluded to in one drawing in Under Ground.

[25] John Tenniel illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) for a fee of £138, which was roughly a fourth of what Carroll earned each year and which he paid for himself.

[28] Tenniel likely based the majority of his illustrations on those in Under Ground,[29] and Carroll carefully oversaw his work;[30] among his suggestions was that Alice should have long, light-coloured hair.

[32] Tenniel's depiction of Alice has its origins in a physically similar character which appeared in at least eight cartoons in Punch, during a four-year period that began in 1860.

[31] In an 1860 cartoon, this character wore clothes now associated with Alice: "the full skirt, pale stockings, flat shoes, and a hairband over her loose hair".

[31] In the cartoons, the character appeared as an archetype of a pleasant girl from the middle classes;[33] she has been described as similar to Alice: "a pacifist and noninterventionist, patient and polite, slow to return the aggression of others".

[36] Carroll expressed unhappiness at Tenniel's refusal to use a model for illustrations of Alice,[nb 2] writing that this resulted in her head and feet being out of proportion.

[63] Freudians believed that the events in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reflected the personality and desires of the author,[64] because the stories which it was based on had been told spontaneously.

"[45] Robert Douglass-Fairhurst compares Alice's cultural status to "something more like a modern myth," suggesting her ability to act as an empty canvas for "abstract hopes and fears" allows for further "meanings" to be ascribed to the character.

[75] Her popularity has been attributed to the idea that she performs the shōjo ideal, a Japanese understanding of girlhood that is "sweet and innocent on the outside, and considerably autonomous on the inside.

[78] The expiration of the copyright of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1907[nb 4] resulted in eight new printings, including one illustrated in an Art Nouveau style by Arthur Rackham.

[82] Among the other notable illustrators are Blanche McManus (1896);[21] Peter Newell (1901), who used monochrome; Mabel Lucie Atwell (1910); Harry Furniss (1926); and Willy Pogany (1929), who featured an Art Deco style.

Sexton (1933) and J. Morton Sale (1933), both of whom featured an older Alice; Mervyn Peake (1954); Ralph Steadman (1967), for which he received the Francis Williams Memorial award in 1972; Salvador Dalí (1969), who used Surrealism;[84] and Peter Blake, with his watercolours (1970).