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Through the Looking-Glass

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Through the Looking-Glass

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.

Infobox

Author
Lewis Carroll
Illustrator
John Tenniel
Genre
Children's fictionPortal fantasyLiterary nonsense
Publisher
Macmillan & Co
Publication date
December 1871
Publication place
London
Preceded by
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Media type
Print (hardcover)
Language
English
Text
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There at Wikisource

Tables

· Characters
Tweedledee
Tweedledee
White Pieces
Tweedledee
White Pawns
Daisy
Red Pawns
Daisy
Red Pieces
Humpty Dumpty
Unicorn
Unicorn
White Pieces
Unicorn
White Pawns
Haigha
Red Pawns
Messenger
Red Pieces
Carpenter
Sheep
Sheep
White Pieces
Sheep
White Pawns
Oyster
Red Pawns
Oyster
Red Pieces
Walrus
White Queen
White Queen
White Pieces
White Queen
White Pawns
Lily
Red Pawns
Tiger-lily
Red Pieces
Red Queen
White King
White King
White Pieces
White King
White Pawns
Fawn
Red Pawns
Rose
Red Pieces
Red King
Aged man
Aged man
White Pieces
Aged man
White Pawns
Oyster
Red Pawns
Oyster
Red Pieces
Crow
White Knight
White Knight
White Pieces
White Knight
White Pawns
Hatta
Red Pawns
Frog
Red Pieces
Red Knight
Tweedledum
Tweedledum
White Pieces
Tweedledum
White Pawns
Daisy
Red Pawns
Daisy
Red Pieces
Lion
White Pieces
White Pawns
Red Pawns
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

References

  1. In Carroll's day and well into the twentieth century "looking-glass" was the normal form; "mirror" was regarded as a gen
  2. Regardless of the colour of the physical pieces, the two sides in chess are traditionally called Black and White, but iv
  3. Examples include A Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry (1860) and The Formulæ of Plane Trigonometry (1861).
  4. Some biographers accept Raikes's suggestion that the exchange was seminal to the plot of Through the Looking-Glass, but
  5. From its early days in the 1840s, Punch had been an important and influential weekly magazine. By Tenniel's time its inf
  6. As well as being an author, Gilbert illustrated his own verses in the magazine Fun. Carroll's biographer Michael Bakewel
  7. The proofs were bought by a Manhattan book dealer, for a bid of £1,700 (about £22,300 in 2024 terms), on behalf of a cli
  8. See § Chess below.
  9. This and all the other line drawings from the book in this article are by Tenniel.
  10. According to the Oxford English Dictionary all the figures used in a game of chess may be called "pieces" but the term i
  11. Pawns that reach the last row are promoted to Queen (or other piece of the player's choice).
  12. Pawns can advance two spaces on their first move.
  13. First introduced in Chapter Seven of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
  14. Such adaptations are typically titled Alice in Wonderland but include characters interpolated from Through the Looking-G
  15. The Adventures of Alice had, along with characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, almost half the characters fro
  16. This German translation, published in February 1872, is by the Very Rev Robert Scott, co-compiler – with Alice Liddell's
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