Publications

This book is the first in the Burgon Society Historical Reprints series of important texts on the history of academic dress and related topics. Here are reprinted all the plates of academic dress that appeared in Rudolph Ackermann’s two-volume histories of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge published in 1814 and 1815, giving a valuable snapshot of the academic and official dress in use at these Universities at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

This new, much expanded edition is almost twice as long as the 1995 edition, incorporates a comprehensive introduction, includes newly-redrawn diagrams of all the various shapes and patterns of gowns and hoods, photographs of common patterns of brocade and styles of lace and braid, and historical notes on the evolution of modern academical dress. The specifications themselves take up nearly 400 pages and are the result of several years’ careful research. Also included is a bibliography of further sources.

This second volume of Shaw’s Academical Dress completes the cataloguing of academic dress in Great Britain and Ireland. Whereas the first volume dealt with degree-awarding institutions (largely universities), this volume deals with non-degree awards, such as diplomas and certificates (where they have not already been dealt with in the first volume), and also with membership robes. As with the first volume, this volume includes diagrams of all the various shapes and patterns of gowns and hoods, photographs of common patterns of brocade and styles of lace and braid, and a bibliography of further sources. It also includes historical notes on all the institutions featured.

The second volume in the Burgon Society Historic Reprints series brings together ten important sources and articles on the nature of Lambeth degrees and their academical dress. It includes the complete text of Bishop Francis Gastrell’s legal claim in 1717 that Lambeth degrees were not equivalent to university degrees; a complete list of Lambeth degree recipients 1539-1995; an examination of Charles Franklyn’s claim that the degrees are really ‘state’ or royal degrees; reprints of articles by Noel Cox FBS, and by Graham Zellick FBS (the President of the Burgon Society), on the robes for the degrees. The volume also includes a list of archival holdings related to the degrees and some correspondence in journals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on Lambeth degrees.

Subtitled ‘The University of West Bromwich Considers the Place of Academic Dress in a Contemporary University’, this Special Issue of Transactions vol. 11 contains an imaginary university’s informal committee discussion of the purpose of academic dress.