Literary Oxford: Authors and Poets

Oxford, England is one of my most special places and I am returning this week for a wedding so I thought I would share some of it with you. It is an amazing city full of layers of history. In the next few weeks I will share places and people associated with Oxford, as well as some video and audio I will post while I am there.

I first fell in love with Oxford when reading of Christminster as Jerusalem in Thomas Hardy's “Jude The Obscure“. These cities combine in my head to form a romantic, literary heaven (far from actuality but they are still magical!). I studied Theology at Mansfield College, University of Oxford between 1994-1997. It was a fantastic time and my love of Oxford endures.

JRR Tolkien, author of “The Lord of the Rings” studied as an undergraduate at Exeter College, and later lived and worked in Oxford. He used to meet with C. S Lewis, author of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” at the Eagle & Child pub, and then later The Lamb & Flag. English pubs in Oxford are a hotbed of literary activity – particularly in the winter with some mulled wine!

T E Lawrence started writing “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” whilst at All Souls College. I love that book and this quote is one of my favourite.

“All men dream: but not equally.Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”

Oscar Wilde also went to Magdalen College, Oxford. He wrote “The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison”. He wrote many poems while he was there, and graduated with a double first in Greats.

Other poets who studied at Oxford include Percy Bysshe Shelley, who wrote Ozymandias and was sent down (expelled) for writing “The Necessity of Atheism” and Gerard Manley Hopkins who went to Balliol College.

Image: Flickr Creative Commons Nomadical