There are many things I'll take away from this course - to name a few: I found it interesting how tight-knit the Victorian illustrated books community was; for every author/illustrator we studied, a connection could be drawn between him/her and at least one other author/illustrator we studied. This really puts into focus how developments in this medium happened collaboratively, much like how the process of illustrating an individual book is a collaborative process between writer, illustrator, and publisher. I found it cool to look for stylistic similarities between the works of the different illustrators we've studied and consider how each may have informed the other. Maybe the biggest thing I'll take away from this course is how dramatically the meaning of a text can shift depending on how it's illustrated. Prior to this course, I would have thought the range of possible interpretations an illustration can open up would be relatively smaller, fixed by the rigidness of the text. Especially studying "Goblin Market," it was eye-opening to see how pairing a certain illustration with the poem can completely alter how I read it. This made me curious to learn about other means by which one text can take on new meanings depending on its presentation - for example, context, front and back-cover designs, intended audience, etc. I used to consider illustrations ancillary or even irrelevant to a text's meaning, and consequently hadn't spent much time studying them when they appeared in book's I've read. The visual literacy skills I developed through this course will allow me to pay greater attention to illustrations when I encounter them in my future studies.