The Oxford Wits, a term coined later, were an identifiable group of literary and intellectual aesthetes and dandies, present as undergraduates at the University of Oxford in England in the first half of the 1920s.
Their leader in fashion was Harold Acton, but their later leader in intellectual matters was more noticeably Maurice Bowra. Their attitudes were those portrayed and parodied in the nostalgic Brideshead Revisited of Evelyn Waugh, the most important literary figure to emerge from the group.
Others who are cited as Oxford Wits are John Betjeman, Robert Byron, Cyril Connolly, Brian Howard, Alan Pryce-Jones, John Sparrow, John Sutro, and Christopher Sykes.
Famous quotes containing the words oxford and/or wits:
“The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford is Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit from both. The reading men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the examination, do not work but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college doomsday.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)