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The University of Melbourne 1850-1939

By: Selleck, Richard

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Paperback | 29 August 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
876 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
24.51 x 16.1 x 4.39

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This is a warm, wry narrative, gentle but persistent in its ironies, and marvelously attuned to the untidiness, drama and farce of the birth and progress of a self-consciously prestigious institution.

Amid the excitement and disorder of the gold rush, Melbourne's middle class created the University of Melbourne-known to many generations as 'The Shop'-to serve the interests of its sons. The foundation professors were well acquainted with the ancient universities of England and Ireland, but they swiftly realised that colonial society had different needs and visions.

Richard Selleck adroitly places the university in its historical and political context. He examines its relation to government, the press and the school system, and its mutually self-serving links with the professions such as law, medicine, engineering and teaching. He analyses the contemporary intellectual debates: the significance of evolution and political economy, the power and promise of science, the challenge to religious belief, the status of classical education, the growth of socialism, the equivocal liberation of women, the still more equivocal treatment of indigenous people, the birth of a research university, the vagaries of Empire, and the precariousness of academic freedom.

This book challenges those who work or study in universities today, and those who fund them, to measure themselves against their predecessors. The inescapable conclusion is that most of the issues that convulsed the University of Melbourne in its formative decades are still alive and troublesome today.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction History Regional & National History Australasian & Pacific History Society & Culture Social Groups Urban Communities Specific Events & Topics in History Social & Cultural History Education Higher & Further Education Universities

Earliest Times to Present Day 20th Century History from 1900 to 2000 Modern History from 1700 to 1900

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Conversions
Acknowledgements
Prologue	p. 1
Ideas of a University, 1850-54	p. 13
A University, Its Community, and the Community, 1855-64	p. 41
The Gathering of Forces, 1865-81	p. 111
Growth and Disorder, 1882-86	p. 179
'Fractious Children'?: Students in the 1880s	p. 239
Science and Government, 1887-92	p. 284
Depression, 1893-1901	p. 354
Money, the State and Power, 1902-13	p. 431
War - and a Kind of Peace, 1914-23	p. 525
Leaving the Shop, 1924-39	p. 603
Epilogue	p. 691
Abbreviations	p. 702
Notes	p. 706
Select Bibliography	p. 790
Index	p. 825
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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The University of Melbourne 1850-1939

At a Glance

Paperback

This is a warm, wry narrative, gentle but persistent in its ironies, and marvelously attuned to the untidiness, drama and farce of the birth and progress of a self-consciously prestigious institution.

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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