Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll

Alice is playing with a white kitten (whom she calls "Snowdrop") and a black kitten (whom she calls "Kitty") while pondering what the world is like on the other side of a mirror's reflection. Climbing up onto a mantelpiece, she pokes at the wall-hung mirror behind a fireplace and discovers, to her surprise, that she can step through it. She ends up in a reflected version of her own house and finds a book with looking-glass poetry, "Jabberwocky", whose reversed printing she can read only by holding it up to the mirror. She also observes that the chess pieces have come to life, though they remain small enough for her to pick up.

Upon leaving the house (where it had been a cold, snowy night), she enters a sunny spring garden where the flowers can speak. Elsewhere in the garden, Alice meets the Red Queen, who is now human-sized, and who impresses Alice with her ability to run at breathtaking speeds.

The Red Queen reveals that the entire countryside is laid out in squares, like a gigantic chessboard, and offers to make Alice a queen if she can move all the way to the eighth rank/row in a chess match. Alice is placed in the second rank as one of the White Queen's pawns, and begins her journey across the chessboard by boarding a train that jumps over the third row and directly into the fourth rank, thus acting on the rule that pawns can advance two spaces on their first move. She arrives in a forest where a gnat teaches her about the looking glass insects, creatures part bug part object (e.g., bread and butterfly, rocking horse fly), before flying away. Continuing her journey, Alice crosses the "wood where things have no names". There she forgets all nouns, including her own name. With the help of a fawn who has also forgotten his identity, she makes it to the other side, where they both remember everything. Realizing that he is a fawn, she is a human, and that fawns are afraid of humans, it runs off.

She then meets the twin brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, whom she knows from the nursery rhyme. After reciting a poem, they draw Alice's attention to the Red King—sleeping under a nearby tree—and provoke her with idle philosophical banter that she is but an imaginary figure in his dreams. The brothers begin suiting up for battle, only to be frightened away by an enormous crow, as the nursery rhyme about them predicts.

Alice next meets the White Queen, who is absent-minded but can remember future events before they have happened. Alice and the White Queen advance into the chessboard's fifth rank by crossing over a brook together, but at the very moment of the crossing, the Queen transforms into a talking Sheep in a small shop. Alice soon finds herself struggling to handle the oars of a small rowboat, where the Sheep annoys her with shouting about "crabs" and "feathers".

After crossing another brook into the sixth rank, Alice encounters Humpty Dumpty, who, besides celebrating his unbirthday, provides his own translation of the strange terms in "Jabberwocky". In the process, he introduces Alice to the concept of portmanteau words, before his inevitable fall.

"All the king's horses and all the king's men" come to Humpty Dumpty's assistance, and are accompanied by the White King, along with the Lion and the Unicorn, who proceed to act out a nursery rhyme by fighting with each other. The March Hare and Hatter[a] appear in the guise of "Anglo-Saxon messengers" called "Haigha" and "Hatta".

Upon leaving the Lion and Unicorn to their fight, Alice reaches the seventh rank by crossing another brook into the forested territory of the Red Knight, who wants to capture the "white pawn"—Alice—until the White Knight comes to her rescue. Escorting her through the forest towards the final brook-crossing, the Knight recites a poem of his own composition and repeatedly falls off his horse.

Bidding farewell to the White Knight, Alice steps across the last brook, and is automatically crowned a queen, with the crown materialising abruptly on her head.[b] She soon finds herself in the company of both the White and Red Queens, who confound Alice by using word play to thwart her attempts at logical discussion. They then invite one another to a party that will be hosted by Alice—of which Alice herself had no prior knowledge.

Alice arrives and seats herself at her own party, which quickly turns into chaos. Alice grabs the Red Queen, believing her to be responsible for all the day's nonsense, and begins shaking her.

Alice awakes in her armchair to find herself holding Kitty, whom she deduces to have been the Red Queen all along, with Snowdrop having been the White Queen. Alice then recalls the speculation of the Tweedle brothers, that everything may have been a dream of the Red King, and that Alice might herself be no more than a figment of his imagination.