The posts in this blog may include affiliate links. This means that when you decide to purchase anything through these links I get a small commission at NO extra cost to you.
A great part of Oxford’s past is its rich literary history, particularly as a location, where in some instances it becomes a character of its own. This post is a comprehensive list of books to inspire you to visit Oxford
Books to Inspire You to Visit Oxford
The Lessons by Naomi Alderman
Hidden away in an Oxford back street is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to any but the few who possess a key to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous.
Mark gathers around him an impressionable group of students: glamorous Emmanuella, who always has a new boyfriend in tow; Franny and Simon, best friends and occasional lovers; musician Jess, whose calm exterior hides passionate depths, and James, already damaged by Oxford and looking for a group to belong to. For a time they live in a charmed world of learning and parties and love affairs. But university is no grounding for adult life, and when, years later, tragedy strikes they are entirely unprepared.
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
Nobody could predict the consequences when ravishing Zuleika Dobson arrives at Oxford to visit her grandfather, the college warden. Formerly a governess, she has landed on the occupation of illusionist, and thanks to her overwhelming beauty – and to a lesser extent her professional talents – she takes the town by storm.
However the epidemic of heartache that follows and proceeds to overcome the academic town makes for some of the best comic writing in the history of English literature.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Apparently delightful, innocent fantasies for children, they are also complex textures of mathematical, linguistic, and philosophical jokes. Alice’s encounters with the White Rabbit, the Cheshire-Cat, the King and Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and many other extraordinary characters have made them masterpieces of carefree nonsense, yet they also appeal to adults on a quite different level.
Layers of satire, allusion, and symbolism about Victorian culture and politics, as well as revelations about the intricate subconscious problems of their author, add to their fascination and make them impossible to classify.
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin
Richard Cadogan, poet and would-be bon vivant, arrives for what he thinks will be a relaxing holiday in the city of dreaming spires. Late one night, however, he discovers the dead body of an elderly woman lying in a toyshop and is coshed on the head. When he comes to, he finds that the toyshop has disappeared and been replaced with a grocery store.
The police are understandably sceptical of this tale but Richard’s former schoolmate, Gervase Fen (Oxford professor and amateur detective), knows that truth is stranger than fiction (in fiction, at least). Soon the intrepid duo are careening around town in hot pursuit of clues but just when they think they understand what has happened, the disappearing-toyshop mystery takes a sharp turn…
Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon’s edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening, Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man – facing charges of wilful murder, sexual assault and rape.
But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key.
Dirty Tricks by Michael Dibdin
Dennis and Karen lead a pleasant life in North Oxford until the day one of their dinner guests seduces Karen in the kitchen, setting in motion a chain of events which will destroy the thin veneer of their respectability and lead to ruthless murder.
Dirty Tricks is a brilliant thriller set in contemporary Oxford: a gripping story of sex, ambition and violence with a wickedly humorous twist.
The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch
After graduating from Yale, William Baker, scion of an old line patrician family, goes to work in presidential politics.
But when the campaign into which he’s poured his heart ends in disappointment, he decides to leave New York behind, along with the devoted, ambitious, and well-connected woman he’s been in love with for the last four years.
Oxford Blood by Antonia Fraser
Lord Saffron, one of the young bloods at Oxford University, is heir to a considerable fortune.
But while making a documentary about the exotic lifestyles of the university’s over-privileged set, Jemima Shore discovers that this handsome young man, with his lavish dances and sumptuous weekend parties, is not quite what he seems.
And when a student is murdered and a series of attempts are made on Saffron’s life, Jemima realises that she has started a terrible chain of events…
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Jude Fawley’s hopes of an education at Christminster university are dashed when he is trapped into marrying the wild, earthy Arabella, who later abandons him. Moving to Christminster to work as a stonemason, Jude meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, freethinking ‘New Woman’. Refusing to marry merely for the sake of religious convention, Jude and Sue decide instead to live together, but they are shunned by society, and poverty soon threatens to ruin them.
Jude the Obscure, with its fearless and challenging exploration of class and sexual relationships, caused a public furore when it was first published and marked the end of Hardy’s career as a novelist.
Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay
For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behaviour among her students, and bad publicity for the college. So her prim and cosy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon, only to find the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe.
The police assume that a student prank got out of hand, but the resourceful Persephone girls suspect foul play, and take the investigation into their own hands. Soon they uncover the tangled secrets that led to the bursar’s death – and the clues that point to a fellow student.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a ‘T’. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks – not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.’s small fox-terrier Montmorency.
Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and, with its benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian ‘clerking classes’, it hilariously captured the spirit of its age.
Jill by Philip Larkin
A subtle and moving account of a young English undergraduate from the provinces, this portrait of Oxford during the war is now regarded by many critics as a classic of its kind.
It is a classic of its time, and shows many of the qualities that were later to distinguish Larkin’s great, mature poetry.
Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid
When Charlie Flint is sent a mysterious package of cuttings about a brutal murder, it instantly grabs her attention. The murder occurred in the grounds of her old Oxford college – a groom battered to death just hours after his wedding. As his bride and wedding guests sipped champagne, his alleged killers were slipping his bloodstained body into the river.
Charlie doesn’t know who sent the package, or why, yet she can’t get the crime out of her head. But as she delves deeper, and steps back into the mysterious world of Oxford colleges, she realises that there is much more to this crime than meets the eye…
The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martínez
It begins on a summer day in Oxford, when a young Argentine graduate student finds his landlady-an elderly woman who helped crack the Enigma Code during World War II -murdered in cold blood. Meanwhile, a renowned Oxford logician receives an anonymous note bearing a circle and the words “the first of a series.”
As the murders begin to pile up and more symbols are revealed, it is up to this unlikely pair to decipher the pattern before the killer strikes again.
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears
Set in Oxford in the 1660s – a time and place of great intellectual, religious, scientific and political ferment – this remarkable novel centres around a young woman, Sarah Blundy, who stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College. Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologian and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary.
Lyra’s Oxford by Philip Pullman
Two years after the conclusion of The Amber Spyglass, Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon sit high on the roof of Jordan College, gazing down on the streets of Oxford. But their peace is shattered by a flock of enraged starlings, who seem intent on knocking another bird out of the sky – a bird that Lyra and Pan quickly realise is a witch’s daemon.
The daemon carries worrying tidings of a terrible sickness spreading in the north, and claims that only Lyra can help him – but is he really friend, or foe?
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayer
Harriet Vane has never dared to return to her old Oxford college. Now, despite her scandalous life, she has been summoned back… At first she thinks her worst fears have been fulfilled, as she encounters obscene graffiti, poison pen letters and a disgusting effigy when she arrives at sedate Shrewsbury College for the ‘Gaudy’ celebrations.
But soon, Harriet realises that she is not the only target of this murderous malice – and asks Lord Peter Wimsey to help.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder’s infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit.
Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.
Have you read any of these books?
Have you every been inspired to visit a place after reading a book?
Let me know in the comments
New Post Notifications