I was given this book so I feel a little guilty about reviewing it. It's interesting, no question, and I'm certainly not disputing its veracity. My problem is that this book is nothing more than a series of anecdotes drawn mainly from Jackson's Oxford Journal, first published 1753. Jackson's as a source, and indeed Yurdon's other sources, is excellent. The problem is that she does nothing with these sources beyond give us the bare facts of various crimes and misdemeanours.
While a useful catalogue of such occurrences, The Dark Side of Oxford is not really an exploration of the city. This is in complete contrast to say, David Underdown's excellent Fire From Heaven, which uses similar sources to give the reader a brilliant portrait of 17th century Dorchester, or Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou. Both these books give us valuable context, exploring the social strata of the towns and how this affected the characters mentioned. Those characters become more than names on the page.
If you simply want a well-researched, accurate catalogue of the goings on of the lower orders in Oxford, this is the book for you. If you want something more, such as the relationship between City and University, then keep looking. It's not that hard to access Jackson's online.
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