3 Review(s)

This anonymous guide to Cambridge, printed in 1790, is full of fascinating details which give insights into life in the university and the town at the end of the eighteenth century. It contains a history of the colleges (with lists of their benefactors and 'bishops and eminent men') and public buildings; details of the university officers, term dates and prizes; descriptions of the town, its situation, buildings, markets and fairs, and the county, its towns, villages, seats of the nobility and gentry, topography and agriculture; timetables and fares for the various stagecoaches which kept Cambridge in touch with the wider world; and a gazetteer showing the distance from Cambridge to London and other major towns and cities. The volume includes a supplement published in the same year which gives a 'catalogue of the several pictures in the public library and respective colleges, in the University of Cambridge'.