I have been neglecting my blog in favour of more research time. This semester I am working toward the proposal for my creative project for Honours; I am also doing a massive literary history project on Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky" as it appears in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Since I am spending so much time immersed in history, I am discovering a lot of interesting things...letters, photos, original editions, and newspaper articles from hundreds of years are just some of the things I've been collecting.
It is interesting how original documents can retain value intrinsically for so much longer than copies. More than a societal fascination with history and our roots is at play in these projects. I feel a strong individual curiousity towards these unique artifacts, a powerful desire to know myself in relation to the mysterious figures of the past. Every time I find something new, I learn more about Carroll as a person, the Victorian time period, and the ideologies of the day. But I also learn new things about myself and our own society. Things like how we have changed and evolved since the Victorian time. Things like, even though we live in different times and write in completely distinct styles, Carroll and I share a love of imagination and whimsy, and a love of art and photography. After seeing his original copies of Alice in Wonderland, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, and Through the Looking Glass, I really desperately want to start illustrating my own works as I compose them. I think I might try it.
I do wonder, though, if "readers" (not that I currently have any) would be disappointed in being given the images rather than inventing them as they read. I am thinking of Harry Potter here. I remember when it came out as a movie, and my whole imagined world of Hogwarts and Harry's appearance was shattered. Now, I can't even remember what I originally thought of Harry; all I can see is Daniel Radcliffe staring out at me from the pages of The Deathly Hallows. I wouldn't want to ruin that imaginatory exercise for anyone else...

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My Honours project focuses partially on my Nana's experience as a German civilian in World War II. The most exciting event of the entire month of October was finding original notes and scraps of paper she had jotted on that contained details of her childhood life in Germany (which she NEVER discusses with the family) and of the bombings she was in during the war. I did a little happy-dance around the room when I found them. So cool. Finding those original "documents" to me was like finding buried treasure. I don't know why they seem so much more valuable than what I have heard about my Nana through her stories or stories from my relatives. But they do. And I'm excited about them. Perhaps that is a good enough reason to justify my desire to doodle on my creative work. Perhaps someday someone will find them and be excited as I was to find hers (and Carroll's). Who knows.

Just for fun, I thought I'd include a few Carrollian items I've found with this post. They are rather cool little artifacts...

This one is a picture of Lord Alfred Tennyson, taken by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll). I am reading Tennyson's In Memoriam currently, so I was intrigued to know that they were friends.

This one is a picture of the "real Alice", Alice Liddell, the daughter of a family friend. One of the original copies made of Alice in Wonderland was signed to her as a Christmas present from Carroll, and thanked her for her inspiration in creating his famous children's story.

Finally, this is a picture of the text of Jabberwocky, from a collection of online book images. I was super excited to find this one:

websites:
http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/dodgson.html#ALICE

http://rarebookroom.org/Control/mcmali/index.html