The University of Cambridge

James Bass Mullinger (1834-1917) was a University Lecturer in History and Librarian at St. John’s College, Cambridge. His monumental three-volume history of the university was the standard one at the turn of the twentieth century. For most of his career Mullinger worked on the project alongside his academic duties and his writing for periodicals, the first volume appearing in 1873 and the last in 1911. His extraordinary range of knowledge and the sheer scale of the work make this ambitious project a landmark in the history of universities in Britain. Volume 1 covers the beginnings of the university and the foundation of the early colleges, up to the death of Erasmus. Mullinger compares medieval Cambridge with the universities of Bologna and Oxford, and always keeps in view the university’s influence on the country as a whole through the education of its political and social elites.