Vallance, Aymer
The old colleges of Oxford, their architectural history illustrated and described.
London, Batsford nd (1912).
Full Description
Folio. (30) +xxxiv+134pp, woodcut frontis and title, 50 photogravure plates, many photo text ills. Publisher’s cloth, gilt, slightly rubbed at outer corners and rebacked with recent spine. Formerly in the library of Trinity College, Oxford (listed as a subscriber), with the college’s small library stamps at beginning and end of volume , the first of these cancelled by a withdrawn stamp. A little intermittent light spotting.
A substantial and well-illustrated volume on the architecture of the older Oxford colleges and university buildings, still worth having today for its excellent photogravure plates. The author was a fervent admirer of William Morris, and Morris’ influence is clear in some of Vallance’s writing (he had already written several books in the 1890s on Morris following his death). His narrative is scholarly but limited to the ‘old’ buildings (i.e. pre-nineteenth century), and in his preface and introduction Vallance makes his feelings about the newer edifices clear, being particularly rude about Butterfield’s buildings at Balliol, Keble and Merton.