Whitfield, Peter: Oxford in Prints

For more than three centuries, Oxford has served as a source of inspiration for fine illustrated books and engraved prints. These works hold an important place in the historical record of the city, showing its identity to be deeply rooted in history while also chronicling Oxford's development through the architecture of its most beautiful college and university buildings.

With Oxford in Prints, Peter Whitfield has assembled a rich selection of more than seventy illustrations and prints that offer a portrait of Oxford before it became the modern city it is today. Seventeenth-century prints by David Loggan show the medieval origins of Oxford University already overlaid by Tudor and Stuart buildings. Eighteenth-century editions of the Oxford Almanack depict a city dominated by neoclassical ideas. By the nineteenth-century, illustrations in the Almanack had an increasingly romantic feel, with buildings against a natural background of the river, trees, and sky. Each illustration or print is accompanied by an insightful description, including salient historical features.