Through The Looking Glass (U.S. Children's Television Program)

''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, University of Oxford. It was the sequel to his ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865), in which many of the characters were anthropomorphic Playing card, playing-cards. In this second novel the theme is chess. As in the earlier book, the central figure, Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), 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 (Through the Looking-Glass), Red Queen, the gentle and flustered White Queen (Through the Looking-Glass), White Queen, the quarrelsome twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the rude and opinionated Humpty Dumpty, and the kindly but impractical White Knight (Through the Looking-Glass), 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, "Haddock's Eyes, 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 Translations of Through the Looking-Glass, 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 era, Victorian literature for children, which was frequently didactic and moralistic, sometimes displaying religious fervour and emphasising human sinfulness. ''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.

''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' had grown from stories Carroll improvised for Alice Liddell and her sisters, the daughters of his Oxford neighbours Henry Liddell, Henry and Lorina Liddell. The proposed sequel had fewer such sources to draw on and was planned from the outset for publication. 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. 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?"

In August 1866 Carroll wrote to his publisher, Alexander MacMillan (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". 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". 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''.

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 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 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 (magazine), Punch'' and declined the commission. He suggested one of his predecessors at ''Punch'', Richard Doyle (illustrator), Richard Doyle, but Carroll thought him "no longer good enough".Bakewell, p. 171 Other artists considered but rejected were Arthur Hughes (artist), Arthur Hughes and W. S. Gilbert.Stedman, p. 28 Macmillan suggested Joseph Noel Paton, Noel Paton, who had drawn the frontispiece for ''The Water-Babies'', but he declined because of pressure of other work. 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 Galley proof, 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 (artist), Peter Blake and Patrick Procktor.

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. Within weeks 15,000 copies had been sold. 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.

For other characters, see List of minor characters in the Alice series#Appearing in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, 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.

Chapter One. Looking-Glass House

On a snowy November night Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), 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 fireplace mantel, 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 Mirror writing, 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.

Chapter Two. The Garden of Live Flowers

On leaving the house Alice enters a sunny spring garden where the flowers can speak. Some of them are quite rude to her. Elsewhere in the garden, she meets the Red Queen (Through the Looking-Glass), Red Queen, who is now human-sized, and who impresses Alice with her ability to Red Queen's race, run at breathtaking speeds.

The Red Queen explains that the entire countryside is laid out in squares, like a gigantic chessboard, and says that Alice will be a queen if she can advance all the way to the eighth rank on the board. Because the White Queen (Through the Looking-Glass), White Queen's Pawn (chess), pawn, Lily, is too young to play, Alice is placed in the second rank in her stead. The Red Queen leaves her with the advice, "Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing – turn out your toes when you walk – and remember who you are!"

Chapter Three. Looking-Glass Insects

Alice finds herself as a passenger on a train that jumps over the third row directly into the fourth. She arrives in a forest where a gnat teaches her about looking glass insects such as the "List of minor characters in the Alice series#Bread-and-Butterfly, Bread-and-butterfly" and "List of minor characters in the Alice series#Rocking-Horsefly, Rocking-horsefly". It then vanishes.

Alice crosses the "wood where things have no names". There she cannot follow the Red Queen's advice – "remember who you are" – and forgets her own name. Together with a List of minor characters in the Alice series#The_Fawn, Fawn, who has also forgotten who or what he is, she makes her way to the other side, where they both remember everything. The Fawn bounds away.

Chapter Four. Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Alice follows a signpost pointing to the house of the twin brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, names familiar from the nursery rhyme, which she recites:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.Carroll (1998), p. 68
The brothers insist that Tweedledee should now recite to her – and they choose the longest poem they know: "The Walrus and the Carpenter". Its eighteen stanzas include:

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax
Of cabbages, and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings".
A noise that Alice mistakes for the roaring of a wild beast is heard. It is the snoring of the Red King (Through the Looking-Glass), Red King – sleeping under a nearby tree. The brothers upset her by saying that she is merely Dream hypothesis, an imaginary figure in the Red King's dreams and will vanish when he wakes. The brothers begin equipping themselves for their battle, but are frightened away by the monstrous crow.

Chapter Five. Wool and Water

Alice next meets the White Queen, who is absent-minded but can precognition, remember future events before they have happened: "That's the effect of living backwards ... it always makes one a little giddy at first". She advises Alice to practise believing impossibilities: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast".

Alice and the White Queen advance into the chessboard's fifth rank by crossing over a brook together, but at the moment of the crossing, the Queen suddenly becomes a The Sheep, talking Sheep in a Alice's Shop, small shop. Alice soon finds herself on water, struggling to handle the oars of a small rowing boat; the Sheep annoys her by shouting about "Glossary of rowing terms#Crab, crabs" and "Glossary of rowing terms#Feather, feathers". After rowing back to the shop Alice finds trees growing in it, alongside a little brook – "Well, this is the very queerest shop I ever saw!"

Chapter Six. Humpty Dumpty

After crossing the brook into the sixth rank, Alice encounters the giant egg-shaped Humpty Dumpty, sitting on a wall. He is celebrating his unbirthday, un-birthday, which he explains is one of the 364 days of the year when one might get un-birthday presents. He is quite rude to Alice but provides her with translations of the strange terms in "Jabberwocky". In the process, he introduces her to the concept of portmanteau words: "Well, then, 'mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' (there’s another portmanteau for you)". Just after she has parted company with him he has a great fall: "a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end".

Chapter Seven. The Lion and the Unicorn

All the king's horses and all the king's men come to Humpty Dumpty's assistance, and are accompanied by the White King (Through the Looking-Glass), White King, along with the Lion and the Unicorn. The March Hare and the The Hatter, Hatter appear in the guise of messengers called "Haigha" and "Hatta", whom the White King employs "to come and go. One to come, and one to go".

The nursery rhyme about the Lion and the Unicorn ends: "Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town". They are starting on the plum-cake when a deafening noise of drumming is heard.

Chapter Eight. "It's My Own Invention"

Alarmed by the noise, Alice crosses another brook, reaching the seventh rank and the forested territory of the List_of_minor_characters_in_the_Alice_series#Red_Knight, Red Knight, who seeks to capture her, but the White Knight (Through the Looking-Glass), White Knight comes to her rescue, though repeatedly falling off his horse. He is an inveterate inventor of useless things. Escorting Alice through the forest towards the final brook-crossing, he recites "Haddocks' Eyes, A-sitting on a Gate", a poem of his own composition. Carroll writes in this chapter:

Chapter Nine. Queen Alice

Bidding farewell to the White Knight, Alice steps across the last brook, and is automatically a queen; a golden crown materialises on her head. She is joined by the White and Red Queens, who invite each other to a party that will be hosted by Alice. The two fall asleep.

Alice arrives at a doorway over which are the words "Queen Alice" in large letters. She goes in and finds her banquet already in progress. There are three chairs at the head of the table; the Red and White Queens are seated in two of them; the middle one is empty and Alice sits in it. She attempts a speech of thanks to her guests but the banquet becomes chaotic. Crying "I can't stand this any longer!" Alice jumps up and seizes the table-cloth, pulls it and plates, dishes, guests, and candles come crashing down in a heap. She blames the Red Queen for everything:

Chapter Ten. Shaking

Alice seizes the Red Queen and begins shaking her ...

Chapters Eleven. Waking; and Twelve. Which Dreamed It?

... and awakes in her armchair to find herself holding Kitty, who, she concludes, has been the Red Queen all along, Snowdrop having been the White Queen. Alice then recalls the speculation of Tweedledum and Tweedledee that everything may have been a dream of the Red King. "He was part of my dream, of course – but then I was part of his dream, too!" Carroll leaves the reader with the question, "Which do'' you'' think it was?"

Themes

Chess

Whereas the first ''Alice'' novel has playing cards, playing-cards as a theme, ''Through the Looking-Glass'' uses chess; many of the main characters are represented by chess pieces, Alice being a pawn. The looking-glass world consists of square fields divided by brooks or streams, and the crossing of each brook signifies a change in scene, Alice advancing one square.

At the beginning of the book Carroll provides and explains a chess composition, corresponding to the events of the story. Although the moves follow the rules of chess, other basic rules are ignored: one player (White) makes several consecutive moves, and a late Check (chess), check is left undealt with. Carroll also explains that certain items listed in the composition do not have corresponding piece moves but simply refer to the story, e.g. the "castling of the three Queens, which is merely a way of saying that they entered the palace".Carroll (1998), unnumbered introductory page

Poems and songs

* "Introduction" (prelude; "Child of the pure unclouded brow...")
* "Jabberwocky"
* "Tweedledum and Tweedledee"
* "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
* "Humpty Dumpty"
* "The Lion and the Unicorn"
* Haddocks' Eyes, The White Knight's ballad, "A-sitting on a Gate"
* The Red Queen's lullaby, "Hush-a-by lady, in Alice's lap..."
* "Bonnie Dundee#Lewis Carroll, To the Looking-Glass World it was Alice that Said..."
* The White Queen's riddle, "First, the fish must be caught..."
* "Alice Liddell#Comparison with fictional Alice, A boat beneath a sunny sky" (postlude; acrostic poem in which the beginning letters of each line spell Alice Pleasance Liddell, after whom the book's Alice is named.)

Parody, caricature and coinages

''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' contains several parodies of Victorian poetry,Clark, p. 130 but in ''Through the Looking-Glass'' there is only one: the White Knight’s ballad, described by the literary critic Harold Bloom as "a superb and loving parody of William Wordsworth, Wordsworth's great crisis-poem 'Resolution and Independence'". Beverly Lyon Clark, in a study of Carroll's verse, writes that the ballad also contains echoes of Wordsworth's "The Thorn" and Thomas Moore's "My Heart and Lute".

Walter Scott's "Bonny Dundee" is clearly the basis for "To the Looking-Glass World it was Alice that Said", but Carroll simply uses its form and metre rather than parodying it.Clark, p. 131 Although the rhyme scheme and metre of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" mirror those of Thomas Hood's ballad "The Dream of Eugene Aram", Carroll is not parodying the latter; he commented, "The metre is a common one", and said he had no particular poem in mind.

As in the earlier book, some of the characters incorporate elements of real people whom the Liddell sisters would have known. The Red Queen (described by the Rose as "one of the kind that has nine spikes") is based on their governess, Miss Prickett, known to them as "Pricks". The White Knight contains elements of Carroll himself and of a college friend, the chemist and inventor Augustus George Vernon Harcourt, Augustus Vernon Harcourt, although Bloom also finds echoes of "the kindly, heroic, and benignly mad Don Quixote". In a 1933 essay Shane Leslie suggests that in ''Through the Looking Glass'' Carroll was satirising the controversial Oxford Movement, which sought to align the Church of England more closely with the Catholic Church, Tweedledum representing "high church" reformers and Tweedledee representing "low church" opponents of the movement. In Leslie's hypothesis there are other Oxonian and church references, the Sheep, the White Queen and the White King drawing, respectively, on Edward Bouverie Pusey, Edward Pusey, John Henry Newman, J. H. Newman and Benjamin Jowett, the White and Red Knights representing Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, and the Jabberwock the Papacy. The theologian and novelist Ronald Knox agreed that the Papacy was a target, maintaining that "impenetrability" – one of Humpty Dumpty's words – was a joke against the doctrine of papal infallibility.

Like ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', the book contains many phrases that became common currency. Here they include "cabbages and kings", "jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day", "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast", "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean", "un-birthday presents", "portmanteau words", "Anglo-Saxon attitudes" and "as large as life and twice as natural".

Adaptations

Stage and cinema

Most stage and screen adaptations of the Lewis Carroll novels concentrate on the more familiar ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', although many of them import characters from ''Through the Looking-Glass''. ''Through the Looking Glass'' has been adapted at least three times for the theatre. George Grossmith Jr presented a version at the Noël Coward Theatre, New Theatre in 1903. Nancy Price adapted and presented the piece at the Little Theatre in the Adelphi, Little Theatre in 1935, and revived it for the Christmas seasons of the next three years. The cast included Frith Banbury (Unicorn), Ernest Butcher (Tweedledee), Michael Martin Harvey (White Knight), Esmé Percy (Humpty Dumpty) and Joyce Redman (Tiger Lily).

In 1954 a stage adaptation by Felicity Douglas, ''Alice Through the Looking-Glass'', was presented at the Shaftesbury Theatre, Prince's Theatre, London, with a cast including Michael Denison (Tweedledee and Humpty Dumpty), Binnie Hale (Red Queen), Griffith Jones (actor), Griffith Jones (Tweedledum and Red Knight), Carol Marsh (Alice) and Margaret Rutherford (White Queen). A 2016 film with the title ''Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016 film), Alice Through the Looking Glass'' uses some of Carroll's characters but the plot is unrelated to that of Carroll's novel.

Radio

The first full-cast sound radio version of the book was transmitted on BBC Radio in 1944, with a cast including Esmé Percy, Leslie French and Eric Maturin. A further radio version was broadcast as a five-part serial in 1948, with Angela Glynne as Alice, Derek McCulloch as narrator and a cast including Vivienne Chatterton (White Queen), Mary O'Farrell (Red Queen), Carleton Hobbs (Tweedledum and Lion), Norman Shelley (Gnat), Marjorie Westbury (Fawn) and Richard Goolden (White Knight).

A 1963 adaptation for BBC Radio 3, BBC Network Three had a cast including Peter Sallis (Tweedledee), Peter Pratt (White King) and Geoffrey Bayldon (White Knight). A further five-part adaptation was broadcast on the BBC Home Service, Home Service in 1964 with Prunella Scales as Alice. BBC Radio 4 broadcast a new adaptation in December 2012, featuring Julian Rhind-Tutt as Carroll and Lauren Mote (Alice), Carole Boyd (Red Queen), Sally Phillips (White Queen), Nicholas Parsons (Humpty Dumpty), Alistair McGowan (Tweedledum and Tweedledee) and John Rowe (actor), John Rowe (White Knight).

Television

A musical adaptation for American television in 1966 had a book by Albert Simmons, music by Mark Charlap and lyrics by Elsie Simmons. The cast included Nanette Fabray (White Queen), Agnes Moorehead (Red Queen), Ricardo Montalbán (White King), Robert Coote (Red King), Jimmy Durante (Humpty Dumpty), Jack Palance (the Jabberwock) and the Smothers Brothers (Tweedledum and Tweedledee).Hischak, Thomas S
"Alice Through the Looking Glass"
''The Oxford Companion to the American Musical'', Oxford University Press, 2009

An adaptation for BBC television in 1973 featured Sarah Sutton (Alice), Brenda Bruce (White Queen), Richard Pearson (actor), Richard Pearson (White King), Judy Parfitt (Red Queen), Geoffrey Bayldon (White Knight) and Freddie Jones (Humpty Dumpty). A 1998 television version featured Kate Beckinsale (Alice), Penelope Wilton (White Queen), Geoffrey Palmer (actor), Geoffrey Palmer (White King), Siân Phillips (Red Queen) and Desmond Barrit (Humpty Dumpty).

Other

A dramatised audio version, directed by Douglas Cleverdon, was released in 1959 by Argo Records (UK), Argo Records. The book is narrated by Margaretta Scott, starring Jane Asher as Alice, along with Frank Duncan, Tony Church, Norman Shelley and Carleton Hobbs. The book has been the basis of musical compositions. Deems Taylor wrote an orchestral suite in 1919 with one of the novel's episodes represented in each of its five movements. Alfred Reynolds (composer), Alfred Reynolds composed another orchestral suite based on the book in 1947.

Translations

''Through the Looking Glass'' has been published in many languages, including Afrikaans, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Russian. In French, Tweedledee and Tweedledum have been rendered as "" and "" and Humpty Dumpty as "".Rickard, Peter
"Alice in France or Can Lewis Carroll Be Translated?"
''Comparative Literature Studies'', Vol. 12, No. 1 (March 1975), pp. 45–66 The Rocking-horse-fly becomes . The opening lines of "Jabberwocky":


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
become in French:

and in German, in the earliest of several translations:Imholtz, August Jr
"Latin and Greek Versions of 'Jabberwocky': Exercises in Laughing and Grief"
''Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature'' , Vol. 41, No. 4 (1987), p. 214

Reception and legacy

Reception

Critical response was highly favourable. ''The Pall Mall Gazette'' singled out "Jabberwocky": "what pleases us most is the stanza with which the ballad begins and ends. Anything more affecting than those lines we rarely meet in the poetry of our day. Once admitted to memory, they will for ever maintain a place there". As to the book as a whole the paper judged it almost up to the standard of its predecessor – "there is not much to choose between them". Tenniel too was praised: "Those who remember his picture of the grin of the Cheshire Cat (not the cat, but the grin) will find a similar exercise of his skill in the woodcut representing Alice as she fades through the looking-glass".

''The Illustrated London News'' found the book "quite as rich in humorous whims of fantasy, quite as laughable in its queer incidents, as lovable for its pleasant spirit and graceful manner" as its predecessor:

''The Examiner (1808–1886), The Examiner'' found the sequel not quite as good as the original but "quite good enough to delight every sensible reader of any age", It praised the "wit and humour that all children can appreciate, and grown folks ought as thoroughly to enjoy". ''The Times'' said:

The reviewer in a New York newspaper, ''The Independent (New York City), The Independent'', wrote, "we know no higher praise than to say it is the equal of that charming juvenile ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' ... Lewis Carroll has succeeded in giving to his books a purity, a daintiness, and an absolute adaptation to child-wants which are remarkable. Tenniel's illustrations, too, are exquisitely drawn".

Among more recent comments on the book, Daniel Hahn in ''The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature'' (2015) writes that sentimentality plays a larger part in ''Through the Looking Glass'' than in ''Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland''. He instances Alice’s encounter with the Fawn in the wood and the description of her picking scented rushes while in the Sheep’s boat. In Hahn's view, Alice's farewell to the White Knight has emotional overtones often thought to represent Carroll's sundering from Alice Liddell as she grows up.Hahn, p. 579

Hahn also comments on the levels of threatened violence in the book. "Jabberwocky" introduces a note of real horror; and there is a frequent threat of death or dissolution. The oysters in "The Walrus and The Carpenter" are all eaten "despite (or perhaps because of) their childlike innocence"; and Alice is made to fear that she will disappear if she is in the Red King's dream and he wakes up.

Legacy

Although many later writers, including Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti, Charles E. Carryl and E. F. Benson, attempted to follow Carroll's lead, ''Through the Looking Glass'', as opposed to ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', is rarely the identifiable influence. Lawrence Durrell draws on "Jabberwocky" in his collection of comic short stories (1966): "You can damn well take a hundred lines, Dovebasket ... 'In future I must not be such a blasted Borogrove'". Douglas Adams, in his ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series, borrows from the White Queen: "If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?" Adams's character Mr Prossor shares Alice's concern about being a mere figment of someone else's dream: "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it". A disembodied quiet voice talks to Adams's Zaphod Beeblebrox in much the same way as the gnat in ''Through the Looking Glass'' talks quietly in Alice's ear.

Angus Wilson drew on ''Through the Looking Glass'' for the title of his 1956 novel ''Anglo-Saxon Attitudes'' but otherwise his book has nothing to do with Carroll's story. Another title drawn from Carroll's book is the Red Queen hypothesis – derived from her words to Alice "It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" – that to survive, a species must evolve rapidly enough to counter evolutionary changes in ecologically competing species. ''The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature'' cites the ''Alice'' books – not specifically the second – as important influences on Frank L. Baum's ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900), and comments, "''The Phantom Tollbooth'' (1961) by Norton Juster recaptures the ''Alice'' style more naturally than do most other imitations (though according to Juster, he had never read ''Alice'' at the time he wrote it)".Hahn, p. 19

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References

Sources

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External links

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A catalogue of illustrated editions of the Alice books from 1899 to 2009150 anniversary website

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