Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass
12 chapters
4.00from 145,780 ratingson Goodreads
"Through the Looking-Glass" by Lewis Carroll is a novel published in 1871. When Alice climbs through a mirror into a fantastical world, she discovers everything is reversed—including logic itself. In this chess-themed realm, running keeps you stationary, walking away brings you closer, and nursery-rhyme characters come alive. Alice encounters peculiar beings including the severe Red Queen, quarrelsome twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the opinionated Humpty Dumpty. Like its beloved predecessor, this sequel blends absurdist adventure with unforgettable imagery and phrases that remain part of our language today.
About the book
Published at the end of 1871, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is Lewis Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. On a winter afternoon Alice climbs through the mirror above the fireplace into a reversed world laid out like a giant chessboard, where she begins as a pawn and sets out to become a queen. The book is built around the moves of a chess problem and filled with characters who have become part of the language: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the White Knight and the Red Queen. It contains some of Carroll's best-known verse, including Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter, and plays endlessly with logic, meaning and the rules of language.
Characters
Alice — Protagonist
A curious girl who steps through the mirror and sets out to become a queen.
The Red Queen — Chess queen
A brisk, commanding queen who explains that it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.
The White Queen — Chess queen
A kindly, untidy queen who lives backwards and can believe six impossible things before breakfast.
The White Knight — Chess knight
A gentle inventor who keeps falling off his horse and helps Alice on her way.
Humpty Dumpty — Egg on a wall
A touchy egg who insists that words mean whatever he chooses them to mean.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee — Twin brothers
Two quarrelsome little men who recite The Walrus and the Carpenter.
The Gnat — Railway companion
A gnat the size of a chicken who talks to Alice about looking-glass insects.
About the author
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, who published serious work on logic and geometry under his own name and nonsense under the other. The story began on a boat trip up the Thames in July 1862, told to the three young daughters of the Dean; one of them, Alice Liddell, asked him to write it down. He was also a skilled early photographer. His books include Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass and the poem The Hunting of the Snark.