Teaching in Oxford
From 1870, Oxford started to publish a regular Oxford University Gazette of official proceedings, examination results, professorial lectures and other notices. By the early 1880s, this included a wider lecture list for each term.
It thus became much easier to trace the timeline of the courses being given, beyond the content reproduced in Price's published collections.In the three years prior to his re-election to the Drummond Chair in 1873, Price lectured twice weekly every term, excepting the Hilary term of 1873 when the election was held in February. Following his unopposed re-election, the same pattern continues, excepting that the Michaelmas term lectures on Adam Smith were cancelled at the last minute[56] and he gave no lectures again in the Easter term of 1876.
The year 1878 was again an election year for the Drummond and so there were no lectures in Hilary term. However, from 1879, Price gives no lectures at all in the Easter term, thus teaching only in the first two terms of each academic year. In 1882—1883, he only lectured in the first term, giving no lectures in either of the Hilary or Easter terms. The lecture lists show that more teaching was gradually being done by college lecturers.
In the Easter term of 1883, W.A.B. Coolidge was giving a course on “Political Economy, with illustrations from English History” at Magdalen. Then, from the Michaelmas term of the new academic year, Alfred Marshall gave two sets of lectures at Balliol on a variety of topics including “Production and Value”, “Foreign Trade”, “Wages and Profits” and “Adam Smith”. After Marshall had returned to Cambridge, additional lectures where again given by Coolidge, as well as John Neville Keynes and WJ. Ashley in 1885. By 1886, WA. Spooner, C.R.L. Fletcher and P.F. Willert also contributed, to be joined by L.R. Phelps in 1887 who would take over Price's lectures during and after his final illness. Thorold Rogers also makes a return to lecture on the “Economical Interpretation of History in England” from the Easter term of 1887.
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, frequently attended Price's lectures during the early 1870s, and Price's main collection of lectures in 1878 was dedicated to him. Nonetheless, in retrospect, it seems hard to justify The Spectator’s obituary claim that, ‘At Oxford, Bonamy Price's loss will be, and, indeed, has already been, severely felt' (Anon 1888: 11).
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