Through the Looking Glass is a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written in 1871 – 6 years after the eponymous heroine first appeared.

As with the first novel, the story features a number of fantastical encounters – but where the first book used a deck of playing cards as its symbolic reference point, this one is overlaid with the game of chess. Most characters represent a chesspiece (Alice herself is the pawn) and the setting of the story is a kind of chessboard.