Bristed’s account provides under a new title an unusual and frequently very funny snapshot of Victorian Cambridge.... His intelligence and wit, and the peculiar sympathy of his character, make this an invaluable reprint of a unique and accessible account.
Times Literary Supplement
Christopher Stray has done a brilliant job of unburdening and illuminating Bristed’s text. (…) Drawing copiously on his own expert knowledge both of Classics and Cambridge, his introduction and notes give ample context for most of Bristed’s introverted obsessions and turn them into useful evidence for a better understanding of elite education in Victorian Britain.
Times Higher Education
With much patience and skill, Stray has performed a…resurrection upon Bristed’s forgotten literary classic, and he has further refreshed it with the addition of contemporary illustration by John Lewis Roget (son of Thesaurus Roget). Roget’s pen and ink renderings, such as this oft-repeated…reinforce the literary portraiture with a simplicity of line that anticipates later English illustrators E.H. Shepard and C.G. Harper.
Carlyle Studies Annual