When I started this travelogue at the beginning of my 2004 trip to England, I had every intention of finishing it while I was there, or, at the very least in 2004. However, I am just now sitting down to write its final installment in late June of 2008. Such is life, I suppose!

Picking up where my narrative left off, I had great time in Cambridge and got some good research done. During the rest of my stay in England, had many more adventures, and, sadly, which are now too long distant to relate in any detail, let alone make them at all entertaining to my audience. A few of the highlights: Oxford (where I found some really great unpublished poems by Ouida); meeting up with my brother and his girlfriend and went to the Notting Hill Carnival, seeing The Woman in White and Sweeney Todd; Victorian galleries at the Tate Britain; doing periodical research at British Library's Newspaper Library in Colindale; William Morris Gallery in Waltham Forest; Greenwich; Southbank and the Globe Theatre; a very lovely going away dinner at the Lutheran Centre; and, finally, getting stuck in NYC overnight on my way back home.

Though it has been almost four years since I spent those three months across the pond, my memories and impressions of the trip remain sharp . . . the experience of working with actual original documents by the writers I study and the indescribable feeling of being in the places that Victorians themselves occupied. I have recently finished my Ph.D. at UF, and I know that this trip to England was a key part of my transition from a very young graduate student to a (sometimes) poised professional. Travelling abroad by myself was an important adventure for me personally and has made me into a much more confident traveler, willing to go off the beaten path and explore the places I visit.