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On the Cover is "The Bleatin' of the Kid Excites the Tiger," the frontispiece to Stalky & Co. (Vol. 18 of The Writings and Prose Verse of Rudyard Kipling. New York: Scribner's, 1916.)

VS Staff:

With this volume, the Victorian Studies office bids farewell to Managing Editor Bill Vander Lugt and Book Review Editor Katie Harse. We won't say that office standards have slipped since their departure, only that the floors have been greased, and we are all wearing wooden shoes. We are grateful to Bill for descending into the bowels of Pro-Cite, and for having braved the underbelly of the world of electronic citation and its sundry unsavory types in his quest to build a better Victorian Bibliography. Bill continues his research on Victorian prosody. We will sadly miss Katie's keen spider-sense, which gave her not only unprecedented mastery over the vast and delicate web that is the book review corner, but also an uncanny knowledge of, frankly, everything else. Katie, too, is now able to dedicate more time to her scholarly work on chance in Victorian culture.

By virtue of being the only remaining staff editor in the office, Bryan B. Rasmussen fills the Managing Editor power-vacuum left in Bill's absence—this despite the trepidation of his former office colleagues and the Editors. But to everyone's relief, Bryan is aided by crack Editorial Assistant Jennifer M. Salrin and Book Review Editor Kyle S. Schlabach, in both of whom he recognizes degrees of competence he can never hope to achieve. Bryan's planned auto-obsolescence gives him more time for his own research on the rhetoric of social investigation in Victorian culture.

Jennifer brings with her a focused ability to shepherd manuscripts through the review process and to copy-edit with eagle-eyed exactitude. These skills are no doubt enhanced by the subject of her scholarship: Jennifer's research explores the cultural construct of attention in the Victorian period. She is thrilled to be applying her knowledge of Victorian educational practices and theories in an effort to stimulate better the attentiveness of her officemates.

Kyle's affinity for books has facilitated his adjustment to his new position; this quality has been apparent since his grade-school days, when he was known as the toughest guy to hang out in the stacks at the school library. Though his dissertation examines geography, territory, and subjectivity in nineteenth-century Irish writing, he nonetheless often gets lost in large parking lots.

With this issue VS welcomes interns Mike Quilligan and Caitlin Tegart. Mike's time in the VS office has been marked by extremes: his startling ability with the 2002 Victorian Bibliography is counterbalanced by his startling inability to use the "Urgent: Proofs" stamp. Though reportedly a Romanticist, he is as likely to be found arguing the merits of such sci-fi gems as Zardoz or Starship Troopers as he is regaling the rest of the staff with his continuing saga of applying to grad school.

Caitlin has never wanted for friendship or guidance at VS, though often for a bigger bag for all her books. Her duties as mistress of house style and curator of cross- reading have given her a unique glimpse into the scholarly world to which she hopes to gain admittance after graduating with a degree in English and Art History in 2005. She faces the challenges of VS as best she can considering she was born well after the release of Empire Strikes Back. She is easily the best intern, except for Mike.

As always, Victorian Studies thanks the Indiana University Honors College, without whose generous support our internship program would not be possible.