Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a novel published in December 1871 by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. It is the sequel to his Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), in which many of the characters were anthropomorphic playing cards. In this second novel the theme is chess. As in the earlier book, the central figure, Alice, enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a large looking-glass (a mirror) into a world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just as in a reflection, things are reversed, including logic (for example, running helps one remain stationary, walking away from something brings one towards it, chessmen are alive and nursery-rhyme characters are real).
Among the characters Alice meets are the severe Red Queen, the gentle and flustered White Queen, the quarrelsome twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the rude and opinionated Humpty Dumpty, and the kindly but impractical White Knight. Eventually, as in the earlier book, after a succession of strange adventures, Alice wakes and realises she has been dreaming. As in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the original illustrations are by John Tenniel.
The book contains several verse passages, including "Jabberwocky", "The Walrus and the Carpenter" and the White Knight's ballad, "A-sitting on a Gate". Like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the book introduces phrases that have become common currency, including "jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day", "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast", "un-birthday presents", "portmanteau words" and "as large as life and twice as natural".
Through the Looking Glass has been adapted for the stage and the screen and translated into many languages. Critical opinion of the book has generally been favourable and either ranked it on a par with its predecessor or else only just short of it.
Background and first publication
Although by 1871 Lewis Carroll had published several books and papers under his real name – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – they had all been scholarly works about mathematics, on which he lectured at the University of Oxford. Under his pseudonym he had published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), the work for which he was known to the wider public.Cohen, Morton N. "Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (pseud. Lewis Carroll)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2013 That book was greatly different from much Victorian literature for children, which was frequently didactic and moralistic, sometimes displaying religious fervour and emphasising human sinfulness.Hahn, pp. 21, 181, 197–198, 363, 368 and 534 The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Carroll's book as "a landmark 'nonsense' text, liberating children from didactic fiction".Birch, Dinah, ed. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford University Press 2009 A reviewer at the time of publication commented that the book "has no moral, and does not teach anything. It is without any of that bitter foundation which some people imagine ought to be at the bottom of all children's books".Unnamed press reviewer, quoted in Hahn, p. 18 Another wrote, "If there be such a thing as perfection in children's tales, we should be tempted to say that Mr Carroll had reached it". The book sold in large numbers, and within a year of its publication Carroll was contemplating a sequel.Muir, pp. 140–141
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland had grown from stories Carroll improvised for Alice Liddell and her sisters, the daughters of his Oxford neighbours Henry and Lorina Liddell.Birch, Dinah, and Katy Hooper. "Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge", The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2013 The proposed sequel had fewer such sources to draw on and was planned from the outset for publication.Batey (1980), p. 22 When Lorina Liddell became pregnant again the three children were sent to stay with their maternal grandmother at her house, Hetton Lawn, in Charlton Kings, near Cheltenham, where Carroll visited them. Above the drawing-room fireplace there was an enormous looking-glass (in more modern terms, a mirror). Carroll's biographer Morton N. Cohen suggests that it may have inspired the idea of climbing up to the chimney-piece and going through to the other side of the looking-glass.Cohen, pp. 95–96 This was not confirmed by Carroll and nor was an alternative account stating that the looking-glass theme was suggested by another Alice – Carroll's cousin Alice Raikes – who recalled being in his company as a child and standing in front of a long mirror, holding an orange in her right hand. Carroll asked her in which hand the little girl in the mirror held it, and she replied, "The left hand ... but if I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right?"Batey (1991), p. 92
In August 1866 Carroll wrote to his publisher, Alexander MacMillan, "It will probably be some time before I again indulge in paper and print. I have, however, a floating idea of writing a sort of sequel to Alice".Batey (1991), p. 57 He developed the idea, working slowly and intermittently; in February 1867 he told Macmillan, "I am hoping before long to complete another book about Alice. ... You would not, I presume, object to publish the book, if it should ever reach completion".Cohen and Gandolfo, p. 48 In January 1869 he sent Macmillan the first completed chapter of the new book, tentatively titled Behind the Looking-Glass, and then spent a further year finishing the rest. The title of the book caused him some difficulty. He considered calling it Looking-Glass World, but Macmillan was unenthusiastic. At the suggestion of an Oxford colleague, Henry Liddon, Carroll adopted the title Through the Looking-Glass.Bakewell, pp. 190–191
Illustrations
Carroll had great difficulty in finding an illustrator for the book. He first approached John Tenniel, whose drawings for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland had been well received: The Pall Mall Gazette said, "The illustrations by Mr Tenniel are beyond praise. His rabbit, his puppy, his mad hatter are things not to be forgotten"."The Gift-Books of the Season", Pall Mall Gazette, 23 December 1865 The collaboration had not been smooth: Carroll was a perfectionist and insisted on minutely controlling all aspects of the production of his books. His publishers, Macmillan & Co, arranged for printing and distribution (for a ten per cent commission), but Carroll paid all the costs – printing, illustration and advertising – and made all the decisions. Tenniel was not enthusiastic about working with Carroll again; he said he was too busy as chief cartoonist for Punch and declined the commission.Bakewell, pp. 158–159 He suggested one of his predecessors at Punch, Richard Doyle, but Carroll thought him "no longer good enough".Bakewell, p. 171 Other artists considered but rejected were Arthur Hughes and W. S. Gilbert.Stedman, p. 28 Macmillan suggested Noel Paton, who had drawn the frontispiece for The Water-Babies, but he declined because of pressure of other work.Muir, p. 140 Eventually Carroll made a second approach to Tenniel, who reluctantly agreed to provide the illustrations for the new book, but only at his own pace. Carroll noted in his diary, "He thinks it possible (but not likely) that we might get it out by Christmas 1869".
The Wasp in a Wig While the book was at proof stage Carroll made a substantial cut of about 1,400 words. The omitted section introduced a wasp wearing a yellow wig and includes a complete five-stanza poem that Carroll did not reuse elsewhere. If included in the book it would have followed, or been included at the end of, Chapter Eight – the chapter featuring the encounter with the White Knight. Tenniel wrote to Carroll:
The author cut the section. The manuscript has never been found and scholars searched unsuccessfully for years for traces of the missing material. Doubts arose whether it had ever existed, but in 1974 the London auction house Sotheby's offered for sale a batch of galley proofs with handwritten revisions and a note directing the printer to take the section out of the book.Cohen, Morton N. "Alice: The Lost Chapter Revealed", Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 4 September 1977, pp. 17–18 The chapter was first published in 1977 in a 37-page book by the Carroll scholar Martin Gardner, issued in New York by the Lewis Carroll Society of North America and in London by Macmillan & Co. It was reproduced in full by the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph that September, with notes by Cohen. Although Tenniel had told Carroll that "a wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art", the text printed by The Sunday Telegraph was accompanied by illustrations specially drawn or painted by Ralph Steadman, Sir Hugh Casson, Peter Blake and Patrick Procktor."Alice: The Lost Chapter Revealed", Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 4 September 1977, pp. 20–21
Publication On 4 January 1871 Carroll finished the text, and later that month wrote that the second Alice book "has cost me, I think, more trouble than the first, and ought to be equal to it in every way". Tenniel had yet to produce nearly half the pictures. By the end of the year the book was ready for press. The title page carries the publication date 1872, but Through the Looking-Glass was on sale in time for Christmas 1871.Cohen, p. 133 Within weeks 15,000 copies had been sold.Amor, p. 170 The first American edition was issued by Lee and Sheppard of Boston and New York in 1872.
Characters At the start of the book, Carroll includes a list of "Dramatis Personae as arranged before commencement of game". He then gives notes to the chess game the characters play out in the story.
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align: left; margin-right: 0;" ! scope="col" ! scope="col"|White Pieces ! scope="col"! scope="col"|White Pawns ! scope="col" ! scope="col"|Red Pawns ! scope="col" ! scope="col"|Red Pieces |- |Tweedledee | Daisy | Daisy | Humpty Dumpty |- | Unicorn | Haigha | Messenger | Carpenter |- | Sheep | Oyster | Oyster | Walrus |- | White Queen | Lily | Tiger-lily | Red Queen |- | White King | Fawn | Rose | Red King |- | Aged man | Oyster | Oyster | Crow |- | White Knight | Hatta | Frog | Red Knight |- | Tweedledum | Daisy | Daisy | Lion
For other characters, see List of minor characters in Through the Looking-Glass.
Plot Alice progresses across a chessboard-like landscape in which the squares are separated by small brooks. Each time she steps across a brook to a new square in Chapters Three to Nine she finds herself meeting new characters in a self-contained story.Carroll (1998), pp. 38, 53, 101, 112, 157 and 185
Chapter One. Looking-Glass House On a snowy November night Alice is sitting in an armchair before the fireplace, playing with a white kitten ("Snowdrop") and a black kitten ("Kitty"). She talks to Kitty about the game of chess and then speculates what the world is like on the other side of a mirror. Climbing up to the chimney piece, she touches the looking-glass above the fireplace and discovers, to her surprise, that she can step through it: "In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room". She finds herself in a reflected version of her own home and notices a book with looking-glass poetry, "Jabberwocky", whose reversed printing she can read only by holding it up to the mirror. In this room her chess pieces have come to life, although they remain small enough for her to pick up.Carroll (1998), pp. 1–25
Chapter Two. The Garden of Live Flowers