Myth-Folklore Unit: Through the Looking-Glass

Overview. Lewis Carroll published Alice in Wonderland in 1865, and in 1871 he published a sequel: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. While the Wonderland novel was inspired by a pack of playing cards, this novel features chess pieces: you'll meet the Red Queen and Red King, along with the White King and White Queen, and also the gentle but lunatic inventor, the White Knight. In addition to the chess pieces, this novel features some of Carroll's best known characters, such as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Walrus and the Carpenter, and that most famous egg in all of world literature: Humpty Dumpty. Finally, this is the Alice novel which contains the epic nonsense rhyme, Jabberwocky. So, like Alice in Wonderland, this novel is full of delights, and there is a LibriVox audio recording available too, which means you can listen to the novel while you read.

Language. Carroll's novel is written in a delightful prose style, and it also contains some original poetry as well.

Story Length. This unit consists of one continuous story, divided up into separate episodes. You will be reading most, but not quite all, of the original novel.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: Through the Looking-Glass. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

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Free audiobook available!

READING A:

1. Looking-Glass House
2. Looking-Glass House (cont.)
3. Tweedledum And Tweedledee
4. The Walrus and the Carpenter
5. Tweedledum And Tweedledee (cont.)
6. Tweedledum And Tweedledee (end)
7. Humpty Dumpty
8. Humpty Dumpty (cont.)
9. Humpty Dumpty (cont. again)
10. Humpty Dumpty (end)

READING B:

1. My Own Invention
2. My Own Invention (cont.)
3. My Own Invention (cont. again)
4. My Own Invention (end)
5. Queen Alice
6. Queen Alice (cont.)
7. Queen Alice (cont. again)
8. Queen Alice (end)
9. Shaking and Waking

(illustration by John Tenniel)