Scrapbook
Janiet Thielke
2007
2nd Prize
Major: English (Creative Writing)
Status: Undergraduate
A second place award went to work offering clues to a mystery that has long intrigued scholars. Lewis Carroll wrote almost daily in his diary, affording a fascinationg look into his life and sources of inspiration. However, soon after his death in 1898, several volumes of his diaries disappeared, including those surrounding the time he spent with his muse Alice Liddell.Thielke's scrapbook, which purports to be Lewis Carroll's, contains poems photographs, acrostics, and, intriguingly enough, part of his personal diary from June 27, 1863-a day that some have theorized Carroll actually proposed marriage to the young Alice. The photographs inside the scrapbook echo portraits taken by Carroll in the mid-nineteenth century.