Word: victorians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With its medieval architecture, well-manicured greens and charming wooden punts, Cambridge University is renowned for its beauty as well as its academic rigor. Yet for one visiting American in the 19th century, the elegant surface of Victorian Cambridge masked a culture of debauchery where students indulged in heavy drinking and solicited prostitutes in between jaunts to the library...
...Bristed, the son of America's first multi-millionaire, penned the diary while he was studying classics at Cambridge in the 1840s. Now, for the first time in more than a century, his work is being republished in An American In Victorian Cambridge: Charles Astor Bristed's "Five Years in An English University." His rich account of Cambridge's devil-may-care student life is part memoir, part instructional guide: it offers tips on navigating the city's twisting streets and preparing for the university's notoriously difficult exams, while also divulging how students weaseled their way out of them...
...investment in Bristed's work, he still can't stomach the author's egotism and occasional haughtiness. "He's someone I would have enjoyed having a glass of wine with," Stray says, "but over a few months he would have grown tiresome." Fortunately, An American in Victorian Cambridge, like Bristed himself, can be enjoyed in moderation...
...many Americans studying in Britain today, the Victorian penchant for drunken revelry still colors higher education in the U.K. The decision to study abroad often involves a desire to partake in Britain's lively pub culture and take advantage of the lower drinking age of 18. Some also believe that universities in Britain are simply easier than those in the States. It's a common joke among American students that LSE, the initials for the London School of Economics, one of Britain's most esteemed universities, stand for "Let's See Europe," because they think the courses are less rigorous...
...Victorian colonial laws, not conservative Chinese attitudes, which first criminalized homosexuality. In 1901 British colonial laws threatened homosexuals with life imprisonment for anal intercourse and up to two years imprisonment for any so-called indecent acts involving two men, even if the acts occurred in the privacy of their home. In 1980, after an inspector of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force committed suicide as a group of officers were about to arrest him on suspicion of having engaged in homosexual activities, a debate sparked on legalizing homosexuality. Finally in 1991, after more than a decade of discussion...