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Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

ClassicsFantasy
Pages
224
Published
1872
Language
English

Synopsis

Six months after her first adventure, Alice steps through the mirror above her fireplace into a world that mirrors her own but runs by reversed logic. The Looking-Glass world is laid out like a giant chessboard, and Alice, cast as a White Pawn, must cross it square by square to be crowned a queen.

Along the way she meets a garden of talking flowers, the constantly quarreling twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a chess-piece White Knight prone to falling off his horse, and Humpty Dumpty, who lectures her on the meaning of words while perched on his wall. Lewis Carroll builds the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland around the rules and moves of chess rather than cards, folding in his best-known poem, "Jabberwocky," along the way.

Through the Looking-Glass extends the wordplay and logic games of the first book into a more structured, more melancholic story about growing up and the strangeness of rules imposed from outside.

Prose complexity
4/10

Collected in

Book cover of Alice in Wonderland: The Complete Collection
Alice in Wonderland: The Complete Collection
Book cover of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass
Book cover of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass / The Hunting of the Snark
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass / The Hunting of the Snark
Book cover of The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll
The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll

Vibe

WhimsicalDreamyMelancholic
Portal Fantasy

Genres

Classics Fantasy Juvenile Children's Books Adventure Fairy Tales

About the author

L
Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), an English writer, poet, mathematician, logician and photographer, born at Daresbury, Cheshire. He lectured in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871), along with the nonsense poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. Under his own name he published work on mathematics and logic and devised word puzzles such as Doublets.

Characters

Alice (Wonderland)Protagonist

A young girl who climbs through a mirror into a reversed, chessboard world.

Tweedledum and TweedledeeSupporting

Squabbling identical twins Alice meets early in her journey.

Humpty DumptySupporting

An egg-shaped figure perched on a wall who lectures Alice on words and meaning.

White KnightSupporting

A well-meaning, accident-prone chess knight who escorts Alice partway across the board.

The Red Queen (Wonderland)Supporting

A brisk chess-piece queen who instructs Alice on the rules of the looking-glass world.

All characters in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

Frequently asked questions

  • When was Through the Looking-Glass first published?

    Macmillan & Co. published Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There in December 1871, six years after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The title page is dated 1872, but copies reached shops in time for Christmas 1871, illustrated throughout by John Tenniel.

  • Why is the book structured around a chess game?

    Lewis Carroll opens the book with a chess diagram and casts Alice as a White Pawn. She advances one square at a time by crossing brooks that divide the looking-glass landscape into a giant chessboard, and the story ends when she reaches the eighth rank and is crowned a queen. The moves loosely follow a real chess problem, though Carroll takes some liberties with the rules along the way.

  • Does Through the Looking-Glass include the poem "Jabberwocky"?

    Yes. Alice finds "Jabberwocky" printed in mirror-writing early in the book and has to hold it up to the looking-glass to read it. The book also contains the long narrative poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter," recited to Alice by Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

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