Elizabeth Sheppard, or Shepilinda, as she styles herself, made a visit to Oxford with a married female friend when she was twenty-three years old. This account of the colleges they visited together, along with “Poems, Odd Lines, Fragments and Small Scraps” (title page), was written as a gift for this friend, “Scrippy.” Because of its humorous details about daily life in the Oxford colleges, along with its various tidbits of college gossip, the hand-written memoir, housed at the Bodleian, has been considered for publication before. In 1930, it was transcribed for printing, but the “Bodley Head” at the time decided it did not quite fit standard expectations for literary genre. There was not enough material “to make a book,” the publisher replied to the correspondent who made the offer. In fact, for twentieth-century readers expecting a full-length novel-style memoir, the text might not have met expectations. For contemporary students and aficionados of eighteenth-century literary miscellanies, however, this work is a fascinating example of the in-between narrative of the early eighteenth century: not quite novel, not quite secret history, not quite full-blown travelogue—but with something of all of the above, along with a witty unmarried woman’s thoughtful reflections on the disadvantages of marriage.The narrative is in part a tourist guide, with its focus on the architectural details of the college buildings, including their staircases, libraries, and collector’s items—such as, at Jesus College, a punch bowl almost large “enough for the members to Swim in.” The text is part secret history, recounting gossipy anecdotes about a kept mistress or a male lover. It is also an inventory of the married state of the masters and rectors of the various colleges. Shepilinda notes, for example, of the President of St. John’s College, one Dr. Holmes, that he is “a very well bred Man, (for he is vastly Civil to the Ladies), & a Batchelour.” The editor, Geoffrey Neate, surmises that wealthy and intelligent Elizabeth was visiting Oxford (alma mater of her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather) with the goal of securing a husband among the unmarried heads of colleges (the only resident academics who were allowed to marry). As Neate explains, “It must be that every influence and expenditure were used to offer Elizabeth an entrée to all the colleges.” Shepilinda is careful, however, only to make note of the bachelor or married status of the college heads, as part of her overall inventory. She does not reveal her own feelings except perhaps by her use of underlining: the Rector of Exeter College, “one Mr Edgecomb,” she describes as “a Batchelour in Divinity; & a Batchelour Indeed.” Nor does she usually recount her interactions with them or their attentions to her in any detail, except when she describes an oversized gentleman commoner, whom she dubs “a great Unhavourly Cub” and dismisses as being “too insignificant for my sweet pen.”In this regard, her narrative offers a less flirtatious tone than, for example, Delarivier Manley’s Letters Writen [sic] by Mrs. Manley (1696), a short epistolary travelogue describing a stagecoach journey she took from London to Exeter. That account is addressed to an admirer of sorts (or at least someone who seems to have begged her to stay in London) and in it, Manley describes in some detail the attentions of a gentleman she denominates “Beaux.” Shepilinda is more circumspect in her inventory of bachelors. One of the appended poems makes clear that she was not only cautious about marrying but reluctant to show any romantic preference in public. This poem, “To a person that was pleased to say I was in love,” begins with the unidentified person teasing Miss Betty about the likelihood that it was “Love” that made her “turn poet.” But the poet demands in reply: “why d’ye think I’m Such a fool / To love & make Myself a Tool / to every trifling Silly Ass.” The speaker insists not only that she “never lov’d nor ever Will” but that “there’s nothing in a Married life / but feuds & Jaws & Scorn & Strife.” She adds, “Pray Think what every Woman feels / With Children draggling at her heels” while “he daily to the Tavern goes” and “She stays at home to mend his Cloaths.”Neate has uncovered the basic facts of Elizabeth Sheppard’s life: she was married about five years after writing these memoirs, to a clergyman who was an Oxford undergraduate in 1738 (Jesus College, BA, 1740; MA, 1743), and she died shortly after giving birth to their first child. Shepilinda’s narrative, however, does not include this much plot, nor even as much plot as Manley’s Letters. It is more in the miscellaneous facts-and-anecdotes style of Thomas Hearne’s Remarks and Collections, a work sometimes cited in the footnotes to this volume. Sheppard was a witty observer whose reflections on architectural details, college gossip, and marriage would certainly have pleased her friend and will easily resonate with twenty-first-century readers. She is a captivating observer and a writer well worth our time to get to know through this carefully prepared edition of her work.In editing the work, Neate, who was employed at the Bodleian, asked the archivist of each of the Oxford colleges to supply details about the relevant college history and architecture and any college members mentioned. The result is a richly annotated text, with engaging footnotes filling the bottom half of each page. The annotations offer an hommage to the eighteenth-century collector’s interest in detail and anecdote, even as the memoirs themselves introduce us to the engaging mind and pen of the witty Shepilinda.