[Oxford Sketches.]

Bookseller Notes

Rather than being engraved on wood or lithographed for reproduction, the original sketches here - caricatures of life in late nineteenth-century Oxford - were photographed and reproduced as albumen prints. Sydney Prior Hall (1842-1922) 'was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London, and at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he held a scholarship and in 1865 gained a first class in literae humaniores. He also attended the Royal Academy Schools in London. "A gifted draughtsman able to capture natural attitudes and postures with great skill" (Stewart and Cutten, 226), Hall produced a series of 100 "Oxford sketches" (1864-6) illustrating topical events in the life of the university. The caricatures, which circulated in photographic copies, displayed "a keen sense of the outlook and prejudices" of the primarily undergraduate audience (Brock and Curthoys, xxi)' (ODNB). Prior would go on to illustrate Tom Brown at Oxford and become a noted portrait artist.The work is found with varying numbers of prints. Cordeaux & Merry, Bibliography of Works Relating to the City of Oxford 4692.