telophase | (no subject)

Crossposts: http://telophase.livejournal.com/2382659.html

(no subject)

On the off chance that someone here knows of any, are there any memoir or nonfiction books that you know of about being a woman student at the University of Oxford in the 1920s-1940s-ish time period?

ETA: It's kind of hard to look, because so far my search terms are complicated by the number of books published by Oxford University Press.

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Perhaps try

factfinding?

A Worldcat search brings up Dangerous by degrees by Leonardi. The record doesn't indicate what decades, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't cover the period you're interested in.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18019838

Also probably relevant: A Somervillian looks back (probably hard to ILL) and Somerville for women : an Oxford college, 1879-1993.

I might have to do that, thanks.

Thanks! I'll see what I can do. :)

Thank you!

Vera Brittain studied at Somerville, Oxford, just after WWI, and her memoirs Testament of Youth and Testament of Friendship are well worth reading, although it's been long enough that I can't tell you which one has the university in it. Her first novel, The Dark Tide, is also based on her time at Somerville, although it's a bit unnerving to see how much she makes the character based on her totally wonderful, and that based on her friend Winnifred Holtby much more insecure.

Do a search for Somerville and Shrewsbury, the women's colleges of Oxford at the time.

Thanks!

Actually I'm wrong about Shrewsbury. That's the name that Dorothy Sayers gave to her version of Somerville. So look for the novel Gaudy Night, which is based on Sayers' memory of Somerville.

I remembered that, but I looked up other women's colleges there (St. Anne, St. Hugh, and Lady Margaret Hall). :D

Barbara Pym's journals!

I was thinking that the first volume of Sayers's letters might help, although she was there in the late teens.

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