O-T Oxford and Cambridge Writers and Literature
Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath, Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth…
Continuing from the H-N Guide to Literature and Writers of Oxbridge, the English Universities of Cambridge and Oxford are famed as educational institutions. Each university boasts graduates who went on to be politicians, scientists, and, among other notable professions, writers. But taking a closer look at the writers and writings produced by the minds inspired by the environments of either Oxford or Cambridge, one has to wonder if there is a causal connection between the amount of fairytale, fantasy, and fatal fiction produced by the atmosphere of Oxbridge.
Of course, there are many prose, poetry, and plays written about alternate realities, travels through time and space, and generally bizarre situations, and perhaps, it is true that intellectuals are inclined toward the unusual. However, whether Oxford and Cambridge attract the unique mind or create a mind warped by experience, the graduates and works of the two universities can be creative.
Oscar Wilde
The famously flamboyant playwright briefly attended Magdalen College, Oxford, and although he never completed his degree the college has now named a room in his honor. Wilde is most famous for his comic plays and the events of his life, but he also wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, which tells the story of a man whose face does not show corruption or age due to a spell instead showing the effects on a portrait of the character.
Porterhouse Blue
First published in 1974, this novel was written by Tom Sharpe, who was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Porterhouse is a fictional Cambridge college, and the novel satirically exposes the Oxbridge struggle between tradition and reform still being experienced.
Queen Victoria’s Poet Laureate – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is perhaps the most often quoted of Victorian poets. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he regularly wrote of fairytale versions of the Middle Ages, contributing to the idealism of the values of both Arthurian and Classical myth.
Romantic Poets
The Romantic Poets and the Romantic Movement emphasized the ideals of nature and a return to natural being. Many of the famous names responsible for the spreading of the movement were themselves educated at either Cambridge or Oxford. Among those who attended Cambridge were William Wordsworth (St. John’s College), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Jesus College) and lord Byron (Trinity College). Percy Shelley began his studies at University College, Oxford, and, just as many of the Romantics experimented with hallucinating drugs, the Romantic writer of a work about the effects of opium, Thomas de Quincey started at Worchester College, Oxford.
Sylvia Plath
American-born Plath became a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge, where she met her future husband, fellow-poet, Ted Hughes, who was attending Pembroke College. Plath’s most famous work is her novel The Bell Jar (1963). It is a semi-autobiographical work about a girl experiencing the effects of what would probably now be diagnosed as either bipolar disorder or clinical depression. The mentally troubled Plath committed suicide only a month after the work’s first publication.
Tom Brown at Oxford
Although not as well-known as the prior book Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), it is set at the University and again is an episodic set of observations. Just as author Thomas Hughes based his earlier work on his education at Rugby, the sequel, published in 1861, is rooted in Hughes’ experiences at Oxford, where he attended Oriel College.
The guide continues with U-Z Oxford and Cambridge Writers and Literature, including Utopia by Sir Thomas More, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, and more…
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