An American in Victorian Cambridge

Bristed’s account provides under a new title an unusual and frequently very funny snapshot of Victorian Cambridge.... His intelligence and wit, and the peculiar sympathy of his character, make this an invaluable reprint of a unique and accessible account.

Times Literary Supplement

Christopher Stray has done a brilliant job of unburdening and illuminating Bristed’s text. (…) Drawing copiously on his own expert knowledge both of Classics and Cambridge, his introduction and notes give ample context for most of Bristed’s introverted obsessions and turn them into useful evidence for a better understanding of elite education in Victorian Britain.

Times Higher Education

With much patience and skill, Stray has performed a…resurrection upon Bristed’s forgotten literary classic, and he has further refreshed it with the addition of contemporary illustration by John Lewis Roget (son of Thesaurus Roget). Roget’s pen and ink renderings, such as this oft-repeated…reinforce the literary portraiture with a simplicity of line that anticipates later English illustrators E.H. Shepard and C.G. Harper.

Carlyle Studies Annual

Illustrations
Photograph of Charles Astor Bristed
Foreword by Patrick Leary
Introduction by Christopher Stray
Bibliography
Original dedication
Original preface

1. First Impressions of Cambridge [1840]
2. Some Preliminaries, Rather Egotistical but Very Necessary [1835-9]
3. Introduction to College Life
4. The Cantab Language
5. An American Student's First Impressions at Cambridge and on Cambridge
6. Freshman Temptations and Experiences
7. The Boat Race [1841]
8. A Trinity Supper Party [1840]
9. The May Examination [1841]
10. The First Long Vacation [1841]
11. The Second Year [1841-2]
12. Third Year [1842-3]
13. Private Tuition
14. Long Vacation Amusements [1843]
15. A Second Edition of Third Year [1843-4]
16. The Scholarship Examination [1844]
17. The Reading Party [1844]
18. Sawdust Pudding with Ballad Sauce [1844]
19. On the Razor's Edge [1844-5]
20. How I Came To Take a Degree [1845]
21. The Polloi and the Civil Law Classes
22. The Classical Tripos [1845]
23. A visit to Eton. English Public Schools
24. Being Extinguished [1845]
25. Reading for a Trinity Fellowship [1845]
26. The study of Theology at Cambridge
27. Recent Changes at Cambridge
28. The Cambridge System of Education in its Intellectual Results
29. Physical and Social Habits of Cambridge Men. Their Amusements, &c.
30. On the State of Morals and Religion in Cambridge
31. The Puseyite Disputes in Cambridge, and the Cambridge Camden Society
32. Inferiority of our Colleges and Universities in Scholarship
33. Supposed Counterbalancing Advantages of American Colleges
34. The Advantages of Classical Studies, Particularly in Reference to the Youth of our Country
35. What Can and Ought We To Do for our Colleges?

Charles Astor Bristed 1820-1874: An annotated bibliography
Index

Christopher Stray, Department of Classics, Swansea University, is the author of Classics Transformed: Universities and Societies in England 1830-1960 (OUP 1998); The Living Word: WHD Rouse and the Crisis of Classics in Edwardian England (BCP 1992); Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre and International Politics (OUP 2007). He has been described by Professor Amy Richlin (UCLA) as ‘the God-Emperor of Victorian Classics’.

Patrick Leary is a historian based in Evanston, Illinois who has published widely on Victorian authorship and is currently in the last stage of completing a book on Punch for the University of Toronto Press; he is founder and manager of VICTORIA, the listserv for Victorian Studies.