Oxford

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Oxford

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1parelle
Ago 26, 2007, 9:31 pm

I love the idea of this group - and wanted to contribute a bit of my own. I've only been to Oxford for a little under 30 minutes (one of those bus tours), but I do wish to go back again. After all, it is a city with a great literary history.

Dorothy L Sayers's Gaudy Night is a wonderful novel in own right, and does a lovely job characterizing the city in the 1930's. I've thought that the story itself couldn't take place any where else, because of how the setting of Oxford and the university forms the characters and changes them.

I've a few fantasy books which are set in Oxford, though as such, the setting is not exactly trustworthy. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book is the best of them. takes place concurrently in the past and the future, and though the focus is on the Middle Ages, Oxford plays a role as well.

2lilithcat
Ago 26, 2007, 10:21 pm

First thing I thought of when I saw your subject line was Gaudy Night! Splendid book.

3vpfluke
Ago 26, 2007, 10:50 pm

Philip Pullman's hugely popular trilogy:
The golden compass 6024 copies, 103 reviews
The subtle knife 4739 copies, 51 reviews
The amber spyglass 4498 copies, 60 reviews
is laid in an alternate Oxford.

4vpfluke
Ago 26, 2007, 10:54 pm

Lots of mysteries have been set in Oxford, and example is Death is now my neighbor : an Inspector Morse novel by Colin Dexter. Also books by Edmund Crispin.

5thorold
Ago 27, 2007, 10:04 am

A few random examples from the hundreds:

Brideshead revisited and Jude the obscure are probably the most famous examples where you see some real Oxford landmarks.

A lot of 19th/early 20th C novels have opening chapters in which the hero is an undergraduate at Oxford, although mostly it's just a generic college setting (e.g. Thackeray always calls the city "Oxbridge").

A question of upbringing (the first part of A dance to the music of time) is partly set in Oxford.

John Buchan's The blanket of the dark is a historical novel set in and around Oxford in the days of Henry VIII.

J. I. M. Stewart (a.k.a. Michael Innes) wrote some "straight" novels with an Oxford setting under his own name - I don't remember the titles.

The healing art by A N Wilson is set in a thinly-disguised version of New College.

6thorold
Ago 28, 2007, 12:03 am

I somehow forgot all about Max Beerbohm's wonderful Zuleika Dobson (probably the funniest book ever written about a mass suicide...).

Looking at the list of books tagged "Oxford", it's odd to see the University of Oxford Examination Regulations (or "Examination decrees" as it was in my day) so high up in the list. Every member of the university gets a copy, and it's a huge thick book, eminently suitable for propping doors open or supporting wobbly items of college furniture. When you get severely bored, it can be amusing to read the regulations determining whether naval officers should or should not wear swords for university examinations, but there's not really much fun to be
had out of it...

I haven't read Penelope Lively's The house in Norham Gardens, but it looks interesting (not least because I lived for a while just round the corner in Bradmore Road...).

7parelle
Set 3, 2007, 5:38 pm

Just read The Children of Men, which is divided into two parts. The first book takes place almost exclusively in Oxford, though one transformed by strange future. There are tidbits of museums, chapels, classes, and evensong, and the main character Theo Fanon is an Oxford don.

Trust me, that's not at all what the book's about - but it is a most excellent book.

9Sandydog1
Modificato: Ago 14, 2014, 9:10 pm

>6 thorold:

The quintessential Oxford book! I loved Zuleika Dobson, who's popularity was probably affected by the timing of it's release during that global un-pleasantness (ie, WW I).