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by Simon Bacon (Other), Franziska E. Kohlt (Editor), Justine Houyaux (Editor)
This volume is colossal in all senses: most obviously - at over 500 pages - in its sheer physical heft, but most importantly in its ambition, scope and achievement. It brings an unparalleled range of approaches to bear on Carroll's neglected sequel and in doing so marks the arrival of an exciting new wave of Carrollian scholarship and enquiry. A comprehensive and illuminating companion to Looking-Glass and its author, it is also an exemplar of everything that collaborative, transdisciplinary scholarship can offer.
(Kiera Vaclavik, Professor of Children's Literature and Childhood Culture, Queen Mary University of London)
This impeccably edited volume with its impressive assemblage of contributors addresses a diverse array of topics: the creation, illustration, translation and commercialization of the world beyond the mirror; discussions philosophical, psychological and theological; studies on logic and linguistics; and, fittingly for a nonsense classic, speculative examinations of the flora and fauna of the Looking-Glass World. This stimulating collection of essays is a timely appreciation of a literary masterwork too long overshadowed by its elder Wonderland sibling.
(Brian Sibley, Chair of The Lewis Carroll Society)
It is spring-loaded with surprises and fun, excellent writing, and engaging new ideas on a topic that has been waiting for exactly this. If we are to have the obligatory mirror imagery for talking about Looking-Glss, consider this Companion to be a disco ball, flashing with numerous facets and inviting us to get up and join the dance.
(Stephanie Lovett, Knight Letter, Vol. III/13, No. 113, Fall 2024)
This book offers a truly interdisciplinary exploration of the polymathic influences that shaped Through the Looking-Glass, the lesser explored sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It explores the work's diverse historical intellectual influences as well as its kaleidoscopic afterlives, including scholars from the history of science, logic, philosophy, theology, literature, popular and visual culture, and translation studies as well as practitioners in business, data science, writing, and visual arts. The collection also offers insights into the minds of those who adapt, pastiche, or translate the Looking-Glass with an original poem, four new Jabberwockies, and an Italian translation of Looking-Glass's iconic poem. This collection thus encourages us to re-evaluate the intellectual scope and place in society of this work.
Author Biography
Franziska E. Kohlt is a scholar of comparative literature, history of science, and science communication. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and the Inaugural Carrollian Fellow of the University of Southern California. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she explored the shared histories of Victorian psychology and fantastic literature. She has published extensively on the life and works of Lewis Carroll, Victorian science, and childhood cultures.
Justine Houyaux is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Traduction et en Interpretation at the University of Liège, where her research focuses on culture-specific elements in the French translations of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the prosopography of Carroll's Interwar translators, and the Surrealist reception of Carroll's works. She recently edited the annotated Alice au pays des merveilles: Traduction et illustrations de René Bour (2023).
