§ 5. Official Publications
The Press prints for the official purposes of the University the University Gazette (recording the official Acts and Agenda of the University), the annual Calendar (primarily a list of the members of the University), the Statuta Universitatis and the Examination Statutes (both published every year), and a number of smaller pamphlets &c. giving special information. The numerous and far-reaching changes, made necessary by the war and the fruits of the war, have hitherto precluded the republication of the useful and popular Oxford University Handbook, last published in 1915. Meanwhile, the pamphlet of General Information (on admission, residence, scholarships, and some examinations) will be found valuable by those, at home and abroad, who wish to form a general conception of the opportunities afforded to students and the requirements which they must fulfil.
There are many other official books, both utilitarian and antiquarian. Employers and others have often occasion to inquire what places a member of the University obtained in the class-lists. The information, not always available elsewhere, is given, from the beginning to 1900, in the Historical Register of the University, and for the years 1901-20, in the Supplement to that work recently published. Benefactors and others interested in University Finance are directed to the Abstract of the Accounts of the University and Colleges published annually. Other publications of local usefulness include the Oxford University Pocket Diary for the academical year, and the terminal list of all Resident Members of the University (with addresses, telephone numbers, &c.).
The University twice during the war printed its Roll of Service, and in 1920 published the third and definitive edition: it contains the names, fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty-one in number, of those members of the University who served in the Military and Naval forces of the Crown. The names of those who gave their lives, two thousand four hundred and seventy-four in number, are distinguished by heavy type.
The Oxford University Almanack has been printed annually since 1674, and of the illustrations since 1716 the Press possesses the original plates. By far the greater number are still on sale. Many of the recent plates are of great interest and beauty; those for 1906-10, and that for 1918, are collotypes from drawings made for the Almanack by Mr. Muirhead Bone; most of the later issues are chromo-collotypes reproducing water-colour drawings, preserved at Oxford, by J. M. W. Turner and other artists of his time.
The historical books dealing with Oxford and published by the Press include Mr. Madan’s Oxford Books, ‘1468’-1650, a work much esteemed by bibliographers; Mr. Shadwell’s Enactments in Parliament (concerning Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester, Eton, and Westminster); Mrs. Poole’s three volumes (one is out of print) of illustrated catalogues of Oxford Portraits (all these published for, or in co-operation with, the Oxford Historical Society); and, in a lighter vein, Mr. Lamborn’s popular Story of Architecture in Oxford Stone and handy guides, written by experts, to the Bodleian, other Oxford Libraries, the Ashmolean Museum, the University Museum (of Natural Science), and the picturesque Degree Ceremony (by the Warden of Wadham). The Press offers also a History of Oxford Rowing, and the collected Orationes of the late Public Orator, Dr. W. W. Merry, perhaps the only man of modern times who could make a Latin speech intelligible to an audience of undergraduates and ladies.
Lord Curzon’s work on University Reform published in 1909 is still on sale.
