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    Through The Looking Glass
    Through The Looking Glass
    Through The Looking Glass
    Ebook193 pages3 hours

    Through The Looking Glass

    By Lewis Carroll

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    About this ebook

    HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.

    'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.'

    In Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice once again finds herself in a bizarre and nonsensical place when she passes through a mirror and enters a looking-glass world where nothing is quite as it seems. From her guest appearance as a pawn in a chess match to her meeting with Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass follows Alice on her curious adventure and shows Carroll's great skill at creating an imaginary world full of the fantastical and extraordinary.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJun 3, 2010
    ISBN9780007382583
    Author

    Lewis Carroll

    Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, and photographer. He is especially remembered for bringing to life the beloved and long-revered tale of Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871).

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    Reviews for Through The Looking Glass

    4/5

    1,716 ratings55 reviews

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    • 4/5
      4.5 stars. Going into it, I expected that I was only going to enjoy select parts of this book. I'm pleased to say that I was wrong! Though the majority of this book is nonsensical, the word play throughout is so fun and endearing. I really loved the whimsy.
    • 5/5
      My favorite. I love this book. The Jaberwarky, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and every thing else. I prefer this book to Alice in Wonderland.
    • 2/5
      This book is even worse than Alice in Wonderland due to the lack of sense. Although the story is supposed to be a dream, one would hope for some value from the story. There are some bright spots in that some humor can be found. I do not see the value in reading this story.
    • 3/5
      Far more intriguing than the original. I enjoyed the chessboard theme.
    • 4/5
      I've been staying away from this book, I think it was because there was a made for TV movie based on this book that I saw as a kid, and it was rather scary....However, this book is not scary at all, I was expecting more Jabberwocky, and outside of a poem, there was no mention of it all. Generally, this book is nonsensical, with flashes of logic. There is no rhyme or reason to what Alice does, its just nonsensical encounter after nonsensical encounter. This book doesn't have much of relation to the Alice in Wonderland, being set in a different game entirely.I think I preffered the first book better than the second. In this book, Alice has no real reason for doing what she does, just that it happens.Overall, its a fast read and rather enjoyable.
    • 2/5
      I honestly didn't care much for this book. I enjoyed the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum but the queens just annoyed me half the time and I thought that it could have been better developed overall.
    • 3/5
      The version I actually read was an online edition with all the same illustrations and such. I found it to be just as much fun as the original, with more fun twists and turns with the language used especially. It's certainly not just for children, as there is much there for adults as well. If you liked the original, you'll like the sequel as well.
    • 4/5
      I found this sequel less entertaining than Wonderland. The basic idea of a topsy turvy world within a mirror and the Red and White Queens being Alice's kittens is good, but I found a lot of this a bit flat. The Jabberwocky is a great nonsense poem, though. 3.5/5
    • 3/5
      First line:~ One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it: — it was the black kitten’s fault entirely ~I found my reaction to this book pretty much the same as my reaction to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I enjoyed some of it but mostly found it tedious and boring. Just not enough in there for me. Or else I am not seeing what is in there?I did, however really get a kick out of the Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter. They alone are worth the read! (Poems 4.0 stars)
    • 1/5
      Audio. This never picked up for me. I found the narrator boring and I think he is the same guy that narrated The Secret Benedict Society which I also never finished. I absolutely hate his voice. The story itself made no sense and jumped from one scene to the next. Tweedledee and Tweedledum were annoying and the narrator’s voice didn’t help matters either. I won’t be picking this one back up.
    • 4/5
      It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
    • 4/5
      Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll is a funny, relatively short romp through an amusing phantasmagoric countryside. Based on a movie that I saw when I was little, I half-expected this novel to be darker than "Alice in Wonderland," but it's not the case.The story follows Alice as she encounters odd people and creatures, transitioning from one scene to another with the swiftness and inexplicability of a dream. The vast majority of the book is dialogue- Alice only occasionally does anything other than travel or converse. Carroll aims to be funny, and he sometimes succeeds. Overwhelmingly, the humor comes from clever wordplay (words with double meanings, expressions taken literally, etc.), along with the randomness and silliness of some of the non-sequitur comments made by various characters. Alice herself is quite accepting and mostly plays a "straight man" to play off of the Wonderland denizens' eccentricities.One of the highlights of the book is its poetry. Roughly five or six times, Alice encounters someone who sings or recites rhyming verses, which seldom fail to be humorous and enjoyable. The most famous, and probably best, of these is the poem Jabberwocky, but it is not the only good one. I rather liked the one sung by the White Knight shortly before he took his leave of Alice.Despite the book's short length, I did start to tire of it by the end. There is only some much clever wordplay and zany dialogue one can take before it starts to lose its impact. In some ways, the story feels incomplete. It has lots of characters and scenes, but it seems to be in need of a plot. Randomly wandering or transitioning from scene to scene, with only a vague goal (progress on a metaphorical chessboard), is not very satisfying. I think Through the Looking Glass could have been a genuinely great novel if Carroll had figured out how to put more direction and meaning in the story without losing Wonderland's silly charm.
    • 3/5
      While this book is chock full of puns and wordplay, I didn't like it as much as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". The structure of the story is setup so that Alice moves from square to square across a chessboard in her dream, and I found the linerality of that movement much less enjoyable to read than the circularity of "Wonderland". Lewis Carroll also breaks into the story multiple times to tell the reader how Alice interpreted her dream upon waking, and I found that to be intrusive. I'd much rather have the author leave me guessing about whether or not the story is a dream, as he does through most of "Wonderland". But I did enjoy the wordplay and how most of the characters in Alice's dream interpret words and phrases literally and how that leads to miscommunications. I think this is a good story for children who are slightly older than ones who would enjoy "Wonderland".
    • 4/5
      Also a fun romp through a nonsensical land, but Alice is a bit annoying in this book and the characters a bit less fun. The book skates between organized and complete nonsense, when it should stick with one or the other. Overall a wonderful book but not for readers who like order and a straight plot line!
    • 4/5
      I just wrote a big review and accidentally deleted it. Sigh.This was a good book. I definitely enjoyed it! But I don't think it really stood up to the first Alice. This nonsense book seemed a little more nonsensical, with less rhyme or reason behind it. The sense that I think I was supposed make out of it came to me later than it should have; the kittens = the queens? Whoops! I did really enjoy the inclusion of all the poetry in this volume, however, and I was also surprised at the inclusion of so much iconic Alice canon such as Tweedledum and Tweedledee as well as The Jabberwocky. I would recommend this book if for no other reason than what an easy read it was, even if you're worried you might not like it - I read it start to finish cover to cover. It was definitely cute and worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Although I like this book, I didn't find it nearly as entertaining as Alice in Wonderland. In Wonderland, it seemed as if the silliness came natural, whereas this book seemed to be forcing it a little (at the times it was silly).
    • 5/5
      The second installment of Alice’s adventure happens when she travels through the looking glass on the mantelpiece. In this looking glass house she finds a room not unlike her own. While there, she is introduced to new creatures such as live chess pieces, talking flowers, insects, and an egg (which can be seen in the original cartoon of Alice in Wonderland). This looking glass world is just as interesting as Wonderland was. Here, Alice meets both the Red and White queen (from the chess board). They tell her she can become a queen too. In order to do that, she must move through the various levels of the looking glass world like one would a chess game. At the celebration, things went haywire and Alice awoke in her drawing room. Just like in Wonderland, she was left wondering if she dreamt it all. I really like both this tale and the tale of Wonderland for children because it allows them to imagine and dream. These are traits every child should harvest. They are also traits parents should encourage rather than suppress like many today are. Details: This novel was writtent o interest children in grades 3-6 and is on a 5.9 reading level
    • 4/5
      In this sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Alice goes through a mirror, meets the red and white queens, and becomes part of a life-sized chess game with very interesting and unusual characters.
    • 1/5
      Nope, nope, nope, don't like it, can't like it, don't want to like it.Well, actually, probably if I had a really good annotated edition and an in-depth class on it, I could learn to appreciate it. But Lewis Carroll's nonsense just drives me bonkers, and how I'm going to write my essay on this, I don't know. The books are very well done, considering the idea is that they're Alice's dreams (spoiler!) and they definitely manage dream logic very well, but that's not something I'm interested in reading.I mean, my own dreams are annoying enough. I woke up from light sleep last night with these words in my head: 'Are you going to take this seriously, or are you a doughnut?' WHAT. Brain, you make no sense.
    • 5/5
      I was not thoroughly impressed with this book, at least with the prose portions of it. I will have to give Carroll credit, though. His poetry is able to calm the fiercest roars of my infant.Perhaps it would have helped my view of the book had I read Alice in Wonderland first.
    • 4/5
      this is an in expensive hardback American reprint from Burt & Co., 1915, but complete with Teneille's etchings. I was surprised to find the poem "Father Williams" not in this volume. Now I wonder where I have read it. The only poem I remember well from my first reading (circa 1952) is "The Carpenter and the Walrus" and their feasting on the little oysters. Somehow it doesn't seem so terrible as it did back then. Possibly my senses have been jaded by reams of King and Koontz and Freddy Kruger.This, along with "Alice in Wonderland" which are often published together, remains Thomas Dodgson's most enduring works.
    • 4/5
      The follow-up to Alice in Wonderland. I simply could not ignore the sequel, if I dare call it that.
    • 5/5
      This is a sequel of Alice in Wonderlands, but rather than a continuity, it tells a different, yet similar story. Again Carroll explores the paradoxes of life and build a masterwork of fantasy and literature.
    • 5/5
      I love all things Alice. This edition has beautiful illustrations by Bessie Pease Gutmann.
    • 5/5
      I liked this edition so much. I enjoyed re-reading the book since my childhood. However, being able to see how Lewis Carroll's own illustrations influenced Sir John Tenniel's was inspiring! Their collaboration really worked!I've always felt this book was a second home for me. I had a chance to read about the world as its crazy self. It is a coming of age story about a girl who is curious, outspoken, and opinionated. A great fantasy novel reflects who we are-sometimes hugely important, sometimes small and inconsequential. One of my favorite poems,"Jabberwocky", is in this book.-Breton W Kaiser Taylor
    • 4/5
      Alice and her cat Dinah step through the looking glass and enter a kingdom of strange creatures and have many adventures. Every once in a while you must re-read these classics.
    • 5/5
      Alice was through the looking-glass.She become chess piece abd move on the looking-glass world as a piece.She meet many strange characters there.In the end,you will notice whose dream is it!I like Hampty Dumpty best of all characters.When he uses a word,he decides the means what he choose it to mean,for example an unbirthday-present which means a present we are gave except an our birthday,364days in a year.In this story,many poems appear
    • 3/5
      Much better than Alice in wonderland, but still just ok.
    • 4/5
      Through the Looking Glass is the sequel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Set about 6 months, Alice again enters a fantastical world, but this time climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. The looking-glass world she enters takes the form of a giant chessboard, the squares divided by hedges and brooks. Nothing is quite what it seems. Carroll explores concepts of mirror imagery, time running backward, and strategies of chess, through stories and characters of the Red and White Queens, the White Knight (who is my favorite character), Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty and more. The book is full of full of humor, word play, puzzles and rhymes and well as two poems that have taken on a life of their own "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter." Though I enjoyed Alice’s Adventure—this sequel was a nice treat—perfect for the whole family. 4 out of 5 stars.
    • 1/5
      This has to top my list as the worst book ever. I wouldn't have even finished it other than it was so short. It is nothing but endless blather following utter nonesense in between dialouge so circular that it gave me motion sickness. How is this a classic??

    Book preview

    Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

    Collins Classics

    Through The Looking-Glass

    Lewis Carroll

    History of Collins

    In 1819, Millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

    Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner, however it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

    Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

    In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

    HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

    Life & Times

    About the Author

    The author of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass was in fact a Charles Ludwidge Dodgson (1832—98). He published under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll because he wished to maintain anonymity and so remain relatively immune to any criticism of his poetry and prose. He actually came up with his pen name by translating his first two names into Latin ‘Carolus Lodovicus’ and then Anglicizing them to ‘Lewis Carroll’, a perfect example of his love for the playfulness of language.

    Charles Dodgson’s place of birth was a parsonage in the county of Cheshire, England, as his father was an Anglican parson. The family moved to the county of Yorkshire when he was eleven, by which time Queen Victoria had been on the throne for four years.

    He and his siblings were home tutored which had an inevitable effect on their ability to socialize. All of the children also suffered from speech stammering. As a result, this self-consciousness was something that pervaded and continued to affect Charles for the rest of his life.

    For two years Dodgson attended a school in Richmond, Yorkshire, and then he was sent to Rugby School at the age of fourteen. Like his father, he showed great promise as a mathematician and went on to academic success at Oxford University, even winning a lectureship, which kept him fiscally well off for many years.

    Like his father, he decided to enter the church and became an Anglican deacon at Christ Church, Oxford, although his relationship with Christianity was one with which he wrestled. He was, at heart, a liberal thinker, as his literary work would eventually betray.

    As well as his stammer, which he referred to as his ‘hesitation’, he was also deaf in one ear and had a weak chest, resulting from childhood ailments. It may well have been these psychological and physical flaws that translated into his drive to succeed as a writer and him becoming a prominent member of society.

    Having always written short stories and drawn illustrations, Dodgson began publishing his own magazine in 1855 as a means of creative expression. It was titled the Mischmasch (German for ‘mishmash’) as the magazine was a mishmash of ideas designed for the amusement of his family. Then, in 1856, he had the opportunity to officially publish some work in The Train: A First-Class Magazine, which was a short lived monthly magazine and prompted him to invent his pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

    It was at this time that Dodgson became acquainted with a new colleague, Henry Liddell, and his young family. It’s likely that he felt less intimidated by children, and so was probably less self conscious about his stammer. Dodgson grew very fond of Liddell’s son and three daughters and they proved to be the perfect audience for his imaginative stories. It was in this way that he was encouraged to write Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The story goes that he orated the first version to Liddell’s three daughters, Lorina, Alice and Edith, whilst on a boat trip and it was Alice Liddell who urged him to commit the adventures to paper. It took him three years to complete the manuscript to his satisfaction and to finally have the book published in 1865. The book quickly caught the collective imagination of Victorian society and became something of a publishing sensation. In fact, it has never been out of print and has been translated into almost every language, such is its universal popularity.

    In 1871 Dodgson published a new book about Alice, titled Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Apparently his inspiration was another conversation with Alice Liddell, where they discussed what it might be like to enter the reflected world in a mirror. Although a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there are no references to the events of the first book, but the themes, ideas and characters do seem to echo and mirror those of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This second book was every bit as successful as the first.

    The Victorian Era

    There was a paradox about the Victorian era during which Dodgson lived. On the one hand it was conservative and formalized, but on the other it was progressive and dynamic. In 1859 Charles Darwin had published On the Origin of Species, in which he had revealed his theory of biological evolution by natural selection. It famously caused a great deal of scientific and theological argument, but it also had the effect of allowing people to think more laterally or outside of the box, because it showed that preconceived ideas may no longer be appropriate or correct.

    Dodgson was already a creative mind and it was in this revolutionary environment that he allowed his imagination to ferment the fantastical ideas that would evolve into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. His fertile imaginings were honed by using the Liddell children as his sounding board, so that he developed an instinct for writing prose that appealed to children and adults alike.

    His two books about Alice are now described as literary nonsense as he was the first author to allow himself the creative license to go wherever his mind took him. As a result he produced stories that enter absurd worlds with anthropomorphic animals and other strange characters with exaggerated personality traits. All of the time though, Dodgson uses the scenarios to tackle problems relating to logic, reason and philosophical conundrums, so that there is far more to the books than there would immediately seem.

    Queen Victoria herself was a fan of Dodgson’s work, demonstrating that she and many other Victorians were open to the idea of allowing a little nonsense into their lives. It probably came as a welcome counter balance to the weight of austerity that typified the age in other respects.

    Dodgson’s work also set a benchmark for new writers. Literary nonsense became a genre in its own right and many subsequent authors have drawn inspiration from Dodgson’s ability to delve into his subconscious, almost as if he were taking psychedelic drugs to conjure a dream-like place, that he called Wonderland. In effect, Dodgson realised that literature is a true art form, just like painting or sculpture, in that so-called rules are there only to be tested and reset in the creative process.

    Incidentally it seems likely that Dodgson had indeed tried hallucinogenic drugs. Opium smoking dens existed in Victorian London as it was long before the drug was made illegal. In addition to this, it was known that Psilocybin mushrooms could be consumed to induce mind bending effects. In the book a shrunken Alice meets a caterpillar, smoking a hookah pipe and reclining on a mushroom. Alice consumes morsels of mushroom that make her first shrink even smaller and then grow back to her normal size. Surely drugs had something to do with such ideas.

    Themes of the Book

    It is perhaps inevitable that people have read between the lines a great deal with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. That is to say, they have searched for a hidden meaning, agenda or allegory that Dodgson wished to express through his work. It seems more likely though that it is what it is – literary nonsense. The books are an exploration of imagined possibilities.

    Dodgson doesn’t seem to have harboured any desire to pass comment on Victorian society. Although it is known that many of his literary characters were based on the personalities of his friends, it seems that this was merely an aid to character creation and development rather than any intention to parody them in any way. He was a humanist at heart, so he used his friends because he enjoyed and celebrated their idiosyncrasies and foibles.

    It was this encapsulation of the human condition that seems to have made his work so popular, because the characters are in fact familiar stereotypes, so that readers can recognise traits in themselves and in the people they know. What is more, they are ubiquitous traits, so that they exist in people the world over. For example; Alice is the attractively inquisitive and naive girl, the white rabbit is the neurotic clerk, the caterpillar is the laid back artist, and so on.

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    Poem

    Child of the pure unclouded brow

    And dreaming eyes of wonder!

    Though time be fleet, and I and thou

    Are half a life asunder,

    Thy loving smile will surely hail

    The love-gift of a fairy-tale.

    I have not seen thy sunny face,

    Nor heard thy silver laughter;

    No thought of me shall find a place

    In thy young life’s hereafter –

    Enough that now thou wilt not fail

    To listen to my fairy-tale.

    A tale begun in other days,

    When summer suns were glowing –

    A simple chime, that served to time

    The rhythm of our rowing –

    Whose echoes live in memory yet,

    Though envious years would say ‘forget.’

    Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,

    With bitter tidings laden,

    Shall summon to unwelcome bed

    A melancholy maiden!

    We are but older children, dear,

    Who fret to find our bedtime near.

    Without, the frost, the blinding snow,

    The storm-wind’s moody madness –

    Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow

    And childhood’s nest of gladness.

    The magic words shall hold thee fast:

    Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.

    And though the shadow of a sigh

    May tremble through the story,

    For ‘happy summer days’ gone by,

    And vanish’d summer glory –

    It shall not touch with breath of bale

    The pleasance of our fairy-tale.

    AUTHOR’S NOTE

    As the chess-problem, given on the next page, has puzzled some of my readers, it may be well to explain that it is correctly worked out, so far as the moves are concerned. The alternation of Red and White is perhaps not so strictly observed as it might be, and the ‘castling’ of the three Queens is merely a way of saying that they entered the palace: but the ‘check’ of the White King at move 6, the capture of the Red Knight at move 7, and the final ‘checkmate’ of the Red King, will be found, by any one who will take the trouble to set the pieces and play the moves as directed, to be strictly in accordance with the laws of the game.

    The new words, in the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ (see page 175), have given rise to some differences of opinion as to their pronunciation: so it may be well to give instructions on that point also. Pronounce ‘slithy’ as if it were the two words, ‘sly, the’: make the ‘g’ hard in ‘gyre’ and ‘gimble’: and pronounce ‘rath’ to rhyme with ‘bath.’

    Christmas, 1896

    Dramatis Personae

    (As arranged before commencement of game)

    RED

    WHITE

    White Pawn (Alice) to play, and win in eleven moves

    Table of Contents

    Cover Page

    Title Page

    History of Collins

    Life & Times

    Poem

    AUTHOR’S NOTE

    CHAPTER 1 Looking-Glass House

    CHAPTER 2 The Garden of Live Flowers

    CHAPTER 3 Looking-Glass Insects

    CHAPTER 4 Tweedledum and Tweedledee

    CHAPTER 5 Wool and Water

    CHAPTER 6 Humpty Dumpty

    CHAPTER 7 The Lion and the Unicorn

    CHAPTER 8 ‘It’s My Own Invention’

    CHAPTER 9 Queen Alice

    CHAPTER 10 Shaking

    CHAPTER 11 Waking

    CHAPTER 12 Which Dreamed It?

    AFTERWORD

    CLASSIC LITERATURE: WORDS AND PHRASES adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    CHAPTER 1

    Looking-Glass House

    One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it: it was the black kitten’s fault entirely. For the white

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