This delightful social history of academic life in eighteenth-century Oxford presents a meticulous yet entertaining account of the activities of students and dons at the university: the often inordinate eating and drinking; life in the senior common rooms; the struggles with authority; the place of women in an all-male environment; the pleasures of sauntering in a still-rural Oxford; the sports and pastimes that kept students from their books; music, theater, and the astounding variety of entertainment found in the streets: executions, political riots, and circuses that the gown as well as the town attended and relished.

Graham Midgley draws on and quotes from a rich variety of contemporary sources—newspapers, diaries, journals and memoirs, satirical pamphlets, poems, manuscripts, reports from foreign visitors, betting books, and even recipe books. He reveals the pleasures and sadnesses, the sobriety and excess, the exuberance and idleness of college and university life.

Humorous, wise, crowded with anecdote and handsomely illustrated, the book is a genial guide to a great university in a colorful era.