Oxford University’s Long Haul

Sheldon Rothblatt

• The History of the University of Oxford. Volume I: The Early Oxford Schools edited by J.I. Catto
  Oxford, 684 pp, 55.00, June 1984, ISBN 0 19 951011 3
• The History of the University of Oxford. Volume III: The Collegiate University edited by James McConia
  Oxford, 775 pp, 60.00, July 1986, ISBN 0 19 951013 X
• The History of the University of Oxford. Volume V: The 18th Century edited by L.S. Sutherland and L.G. Mitchell
  Oxford, 949 pp, £75.00, July 1986, ISBN 0 19 951011 3
• Learning and a Liberal Education: The Study of History in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, 1880-1914 by Peter Slee
  Manchester, 181 pp, £25.00, November 1986, ISBN 0 7190 1896 X

The new History of the University of Oxford, already some twenty years in the making, is a prodigious achievement and a posthumous tribute to its general editor, the late T.H. Aston. To date, some 2500 pages of text, footnotes, tables, plates and indices have appeared, and there are four centuries and five volumes to come. As the centuries advance and the evidence mounts, the volumes become fatter. Those who have laboured in the past through D.A. Winstanley on Cambridge, C.E. Mallett on Oxford and Hastings Rashdall on the Medieval university will find the going even heavier: a reflection of the state of historical research today and the problems of assimilating or reducing unprecedented quantities of information. One reading will certainly not suffice. These are volumes for rereading and reference (and let us hope the indices are up to it, for there appear to be lacunae).