Press reviews
Lewis Carroll's new book reviewed – archive, 1871
LEWIS CARROLL’S NEW STORY THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE, By Lewis Carroll, author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” With fifty illustrations, by John Tenniel, London: Macmillan and Co. 1872.
Lewis Carroll has been telling another modern fairy tale to those three fortunate young ladies who have him for their fabulist, and now the result lies before us in a charming Christmas book, where those thousands of children of a larger or smaller growth who have laughed over the adventures of Alice, that most delightful of little girls, may follow their heroine through a new “Wonderland.”
The realm of marvels which she visits on this occasion is “Looking-glass House,” part of which she has often seen in the drawing-room; but her curiosity is strongly excited about the rest. “You can just see a little peep of the passage in ‘Looking-glass House’ if you leave the door of the drawing-room wide open; and it’s very like our passage as far as you see, only you know it might be quite different on beyond. And very different on beyond it proves to be when Alice one day in a dream walks through the looking-glass and explores it. One very natural peculiarity of Looking-glass House is that most things in it are exactly reversed; accordingly if you want to go anywhere you have to turn round and walk the other way. People live backwards too, and their memory consequently works forward; thus there is an unfortunate person whom we find undergoing sentence in prison – “the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday, and the crime comes last of all.”
Readers of the Wonderland will be sorry to hear that it is their old friend the Hatter who is in this predicament. He still preserves his hat, “in this style, 10s. 6d.” and seems to have lost none of his knack of getting into disgrace with royalty. He still has the March Hare for his companion, and the pair are as delightfully feeble and addle-brained as ever. They have nevertheless got on considerably in life, and are both messengers to the White King: for, in fact, Alice’s adventures in Looking-glass House are a kind of game of chess, in which she starts as a white pawn and finally comes out a queen “in the eighth square,” where she gives a very mad dinner party in honour of the event.
Among other strange creatures in this part of the world are the rocking-horse fly, the bread-and-butter fly, and the snapdragon fly, whose “body is made of plum pudding, its wings of holly leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.” Moreover it lives on frumety and mince pie, and makes its nest in a Christmas box. Alice meets also the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. She gets as much confused as ever, and sadly set down and contradicted:
“I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure,” the Queen said.
“Twopence a week, and jam every other day.”
Alice couldn’t help laughing as she said “I don’t want you to have me, and I don’t care for jam.”
“It’s very good jam,” said the Queen.
“Well, I don’t want any to-day, at any rate!’
“You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the Queen said. “The rule is jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day,’ “ Alice objected. “No it can’t.” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day; to-day isn’t any other day, you know.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!’
This review continues; There are several striking poems; One is written in dialect peculiar to “Looking-glass House,” ....
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/27/lewis-carroll-alice-through-looking-glass-review-1871
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Extracts from reviews of LG, used to advertise the second edition of the book, sometimes indicate each publication’s thoughts of Alice.
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. By Lewis Carroll. With Illustrations. (Macmillian & Co.)
IT is with no mere book that we have to deal here,-to borrow the idea expressed by Dr. Johnson [Samuel] when the inventory of Mr. Thrale’s [Henry]7 brewery was being taken,-but with the potentiality of happiness for countless thousands of children of all ages; for it would be difficult to over-estimate the value of the store of hearty and healthy fun laid up for whole generations of young people by Mr. Lewis Carroll and Mr. John Tenniel in the two books which they have united to produce. In the first volume, Alice won the affections of a whole child-world as she wandered through Wonderland; in the second, that now before us, she will be sure to add fresh troops to the number of her unknown friends, besides retaining her place in the hearts of her old admirers.
Before many days have elapsed thousands of bright eyes will be watching her as she glides through the drawing-room looking-glass, which suddenly softens before her, and passes into the land of reflections which lies on the other side, where animated chessmen and walking and talking cheerily, and finds herself as a White Queen’s Pawn playing across a chessboard earth, and striving to arrive at Queendom at its farther end. Many a little head will puzzle – children like to be puzzled – over the people who thought in chorus; and the wood in which names got lost; and the Red King’s dream of which Alice was told she was a mere feature, her existence being absolutely subjective; and the land in which events took place backwards, like a sentence in Hungarian, so that a criminal was sentenced first, and tried afterwards, for a crime he was going to commit. Much young blood will run cold with fright – children dearly love to be frightened – at the awe-inspiring portrait of the Apolloyon-like Jabberwocky, which
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
And many a heart both old and young will be stirred with wholesome laughter at the quarrel of the Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the arithmetical genius of Humpty Dumpty, the vagaries of that King’s Messenger who was as mad as a Hatta [sic], and the metamorphosis of the Red Queen into a kitten, which synchronizes with Alice’s own return from her eighth-square queendom into her old life on this side of the looking-glass.
Even the face of a reviewer, of one whose heart has been rendered heavy within him by the involuntary study of our comic literature, may be dimpled by a smile of admiration as he watches the skill with which both the author and the illustrator have worked in the difficult atmosphere of nonsense. Many of Mr. Tenniel’s designs are masterpieces of wise absurdity. We may refer, for instance, to that in which the Oysters, incarnations of old-womanishness, are listening to the dulcet speech of the Walrus and the Carpenter, or those of Humpty Dumpty shouting to “Someone’s” ear, of the White Knight shaking the aged man who sat upon the gate, and of the Messenger expiating in prison the crime he was going to commit; not to speak of some drawings which deserve still higher and more serious praise, such as that in which Alice is rowing the boat along the stream which is half river and half grocer’s shop. The skill with which the dream-like blending of the one with the other is rendered is worthy of Wonderland itself.
Before parting with this charming book, for which such bands of children will deservedly feel personally grateful to both author and illustrator, we must call attention to the touching address to his “child-readers” which “Lewis Carroll” has appended to his book,-thanking them for the interest they have taken in his “dream-child,” telling them how pleasant it is to him to think of “the many English firesides where happy faces have smiled her a welcome,” and ending with wishing that to them each recurring Christmas-tide may be “more bright and beautiful than the last – bright with the presence of that unseen Friend, Who once on earth blessed little children, and beautiful with memories of a loving life, which has sought and found that truest kind of happiness, the only kind that is really worth the having, the happiness of making others happy too!”
There are no names ascribed to the magazine’s reviews, but this adds an intriguing question to our study. Note the sentence ‘Many a little head will puzzle itself – children like to be puzzled – over the people who thought in chorus’. Is this a jab from the reviewer of LG towards the reviewer who had said of Alice ‘We fancy that any real child might be more puzzled than enchanted by this stiff, over-wrought story’? It’s quite possible that that is the case. Or, perhaps, it’s the same reviewer, begrudgingly agreeing with something that someone else has argued for. (Note, too, the use of Carroll’s full name – he has surely moved up in the world.) Of course it could also simply be the reviewer’s style – they later use the same ‘children like to be…’ again. (This usage of the style is interesting in itself – some children today like scary stories; it would seem Victorian children did too. Stories in those days, even if we look solely at Alice and LG, could be incredibly scary.)
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