"Alice entering the Looking-glass World" — Illustrations for Through the Looking Glass by John Tenniel

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Alice entering the Looking-glass World

Sir John Tenniel

1871

Wood-engraving by Dalziel

Illustration for the first chapter of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

Many fantasies depict the protagonist (here Alice) leaving the real world as a way of moving the reader into a world where normal laws don't apply. Tenniel's illustration captures brilliantly the excitement of this transition, as does its companion piece, which shows Alice arriving at the world on the other side of the mirror. These involve the kinds of effects necessary to fantasy as a genre or mode.

Commentary by Ray Dyer

On Tuesday 12 January 1869 mathematician C. L. Dodgson of Christ Church, Oxford, entered into his personal journal the news that he [as Lewis Carroll] had finished and sent off to his publisher Macmillan "the 1st chapter of Behind The Looking-Glass, and what Alice saw there." The early title persisted to 20 January 1870, when Dodgson-Carroll noted that he had been "up to town [London] again," and had "Called on Tenniel," who showed him some ten early sketches "of the pictures for Behind the Looking-glass" (Wakeling 76, 112). By Thursday 23 June 1870, in his rooms at Christ Church after a visit by Lady Salisbury and her children, he reported in his journal that he had shown them "the seven first pictures for Through the Looking-Glass" (120-21). The new name has persisted.

A close scrutiny and comparison of this Tenniel illustration with the next and paired picture in the series, reveal minor differences in the artist’s two depictions of the fireplace: the lower border of the now left-hand side wall-picture; and the central ball and minor close detail of the fireplace crest. Whether such trifles were from the hand of Tenniel himself, or whether from the Dalziel wood-engravers, remains a moot point.

Related Material

Student assistants from the University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore, scanned this image and adjacent text under the supervision of George P. Landow. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the site and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Carroll, Lewis. Lewis Carroll's Diaries. The Personal Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Vol. 6 (1868-1876). Ed. Edward Wakeling. Luton, Beds.: The Lewis Carroll Society, 2001.

Last modified 15 April 2021