The Teaching and Learning in Nineteenth-century Cambridge

The admission of women and dissenters to Cambridge in the 1860s and 1870s was a major change ushered in by the Royal Commission of 1850, which finally brought the colleges out of the middle ages and strengthened the position of the university, at the same time laying the foundations of a system of lectures and supervisions.

They address the politics of curriculum: the primacy of mathematics, the development of classics in a peculiar Cambridge form and the introduction of history and moral sciences; teaching and tutoring: the rise of the coach and changes in college teaching; the development of the competitive written examination in the university and the colleges and the attitudes of students thereto; the issues associated with providing students with books for their studies and the challenges faced by women and women's colleges in developing their own identities. Contributors: JUNE BARROW-GREEN, MARY BEARD, JOHN R. GIBBINS, PAULA GOULD, ELISABETH LEEDHAM-GREEN, DAVID McKITTERICK, JONATHAN SMITH, GILLIAN SUTHERLAND, CHRISTOPHER STRAY, ANDREW WARWICK, JOHN WILKES.