Review of Richard Selleck and Stuart MacIntyre, 'A Short History of the University of Melbourne': Carlton: Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2003. Pp. v,193. With numerous black and white photos and six pages of site maps. Hardback. ISBN 0522850588. RRP. $24.95

Abstract

For the sesquicentennial in 2003 of the University of Melbourne, two of its senior historians produced their four chapter text, 'A Short History of the University of Melbourne'. This particularly handsome and trenchant volume covers the whole period in a way that which be savoured by: those who know the university well; those who will enjoy its many insiders' perspectives (knowledge of the place's "lore"); as well as by those who have seen the (more recent) Australian university, qua institution, as a "secular church", with a like eclipse of the public respect for it in recent generations from both students and parents. For the folklorist or social historian the essays are amusing and ironic both at surface and much deeper levels, are filled with many graspable concepts/appraisals that are not too subtly presented, and - in a very real sense - they constitute a "Doomsday Book of Australian Society", if one may misquote a famed assessment of yesterday of Henry Fielding's 'Tom Jones'.