I finished university in 2006 after completing a Masters in Victorian Literature and culture. When most people ask me what I studied for my M.A it normally cuts the most flowing of conversations dead. Not many people know what to say after I tell them in a jolly pub or club atmosphere.

"Victorian Literature?" they are probably thinking "that sounds pretty bloody dry, how can I escape this conversation from developing before she goes off on one about Dickens".
And yes, I'm sure it does sound boring but it also played a large part in kicking off my desire to pursue a career in travel writing. That is because I spent a large part of it studying colonialism and how our empire went out to places far and wide and tried to assert a British influence on them.

I love reading Victorian accounts and novels of colonialists and members of the Royal Army and their reactions to these remote and exotic locations. Thankfully, aside from the outrageous racist comments, their reactions are not so dissimilar to many of the opinions I over hear from other travellers. The culture shock still overwhelms and alienates, and sometimes when I travel, the accounts of these Victorian writers resonate in my mind and I feel like one of them, uprooted from their Victorian drawing room life and placed in a crazy new world that is beyond our comprehension.

Now I am a freelance writer, albeit a new one on the scene, and I am hoping to travel and write consistently for the next few years until I have enough material to write my own book about my adventures and possibly draw parallels between myself, the modern day female adventurer, and the Victorian woman who either followed her husband out to foreign lands or pioneered her own route back in the day.