Through the Looking Glass And What Alice Found There

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is Lewis Carroll’s 1871 sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In this novel, Alice steps through a mirror into a strange world governed by the logic of a chessboard, where everything operates in reverse or according to puzzling rules. As Alice moves from square to square, hoping to become a queen, she encounters memorable characters such as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the White Queen, and Humpty Dumpty. The story is rich in wordplay, riddles, and nonsense poetry, using playful fantasy to explore ideas about time, identity, and logic while gently satirizing the rigid conventions of Victorian society.

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), an English writer, mathematician, and photographer. He was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and his love of logic strongly influenced his literary work, especially his fondness for puzzles and paradoxes. Carroll is best remembered for the Alice books, which revolutionized children’s literature by blending imagination with intellectual play rather than moral instruction. His whimsical style, inventive language, and layered meanings have made his work enduringly popular with both children and adults.

Lewis Carroll’s Christmas greeting is a short, gentle poem written to the child readers of Through the Looking-Glass, which was published that same year. In the poem, Carroll addresses a “child-friend,” reflecting on how quickly childhood passes and how the carefree world of imagination gradually gives way to adulthood. He expresses a tender hope that, even as the child grows older, they will look back fondly on the dreamlike adventures of Alice and remember the happiness they once brought. The greeting is nostalgic and affectionate, revealing Carroll’s belief in the lasting emotional power of stories and his desire for his work to remain a comforting memory long after childhood has ended.