University of Edinburgh
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From a small city college in the sixteenth century the University of Edinburgh grew to be one of the world’s greatest centres of scholarship, research and learning. Its history is told here by three of its leading historians with wit, verve and style. Copiously illustrated in colour and black and white, this is a book for everyone concerned with the university or the city of Edinburgh to read and enjoy. The authors consider the impacts of Reformation, Union with England, Enlightenment, and scientific and industrial revolutions. They show the university rising to the challenge of competition from Europe, describe the great periods of expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and chart the university's building from Old College to George Square. They explore its tense relationship with the city, explore the histories of student outrage and unrest, recall the days when blasphemy could be punished by death, and reveal that the university’s department of anatomy once supported a thriving trade in body-snatching. Upheaval and crisis, triumph and achievement succeed each other by turns in a story that is entertaining, intriguing and surprising – and always interesting.
Robert Anderson taught history at the University of Edinburgh from 1969 to 2007. He has written extensively on the history of education in Scotland, Britain and Europe. His most recent books are Education and the Scottish People 1750-1918 (1995), European Universities from the Enlightenment to 1914 (2004), and British Universities Past and Present (2006). Current interests include the history of history as a university subject, and the relation between education and modern nationalism. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Michael Lynch recently retired from the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh. Nicholas Phillipson is Formerly Professor of History in the then School of History and Classics at the University of Edinburgh.