Terræ-Filius, Or, The Secret History of the University of Oxford (1721; 1726)

Cover: Terræ-Filius, Or, The Secret History of the University of Oxford (1721; 1726)
William L. Mitchell Prize for Bibliography or Documentary Work on Early British Periodicals or Newspapers, The Bibliographical Society of America
Author
Nicholas Amhurst

Editor(s)
William E. Rivers

Hardback
April 2004 • ISBN 978-0874138016 • $123.00


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In his Terræ-Filius essays of 1721, Nicholas Amhurst describes and satirizes Oxford life as he saw it during the 1710s and early 1720s. Although academic and intellectual issues receive abundant attention, Amhurst devoted even more space to the political, religious, social, and moral issues that often worked to undercut the university’s academic goals. Written in an energetic, personal prose style characteristic of the best eighteenth-century essay periodicals, the Terræ-Filius essays provide accessible, entertaining reading for anyone interested in the history of Oxford University, early eighteenth-century British culture, or the close but often tense relationship between the nation and the university during the tumultuous decade following the Whig ascendancy of 1714. This modern critical edition of the Terræ-Filius reprints all the essays (including those omitted in the 1726 collected editions) and provides an introduction and extensive explanatory notes that set the essays in their historical and cultural context.

About the Editor
William E. Rivers is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina.