An Oxford University Chest is a book about the University of Oxford, written by the poet Sir John Betjeman and first published by John Miles in London in 1938. The full title is An Oxford University Chest. Comprising a Description of the Present State of the Town and University of Oxford with an itinerary arranged alphabetically.
The book includes photographs by László Moholy-Nagy and illustrations by Osbert Lancaster and by Edward Bradley, the latter reproduced from the Victorian novel The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green.
The title is a pun on the University Chest, the financial treasury of the university. The book provides glimpses into the life and characteristics of the university.
A paperback edition was issued by Oxford University Press in 1979.
Famous quotes containing the words oxford, university and/or chest:
“The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)
“Gratitude is a fickle thing, indeed. A person taking aim presses the weapon to his chest and cheek, but when he hits, he discards it with indifference.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)