Some Impressions of Oxford

Some Impressions of Oxford is a travel essay by Paul Bourget (1852-1935), the French novelist and critic, recording his observations of the English university city. Bourget was among the most Anglophile of French writers; his criticism introduced French readers to English and American authors, and his travel writing, including the major volume Outre-Mer on the United States, applied his psychological method to national character. The Oxford essay studies the colleges, the tutorial system, the athletic and religious life of the undergraduates, and the medieval continuity of the place, drawing the contrasts with French university centralisation that interested him as a social diagnostician. The piece belongs to the substantial nineteenth-century French literature of travel observation in England. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.