[ Girton College, Cambridge University. ] Anonymous manuscript magazine: 'Girtonica or Pearls from Oysterland. Edited by The Mocking Turtle and the Doormouse', containing a Lewis Carroll parody 'Alice in Oyster-land', and other humorous material.

235pp., 4to. In two uniform volumes, paginated as follows. Vol.1: ii + 135pp. Vol.2: 89pp. With an additional nine unpaginated pages. Both volumes in good condition, on lightly-aged paper, in aged and worn bindings with marbled covers and cloth spines. Written out in at least two hands. The first volume is preceded by a 'Prefatory Note', dated 30 November 1906, giving a good example of the tone of the magazine, which is written in a parody of the academic style (complete with pseudo-scholarly footnotes), and is filled with what are clearly Girton in-jokes. It begins: 'In these days of literary and scientific activity, when the Arctic margins are compelled to yield their pre-historic treasures, when the head spanner of the biometrician penetrates the deepest mysteries of phrenological conformation, when the subtlest secrets of philosophy are secrets no more, there is some danger that the pearl fishing industry may fail to receive that attention which its importance merits. Conscious of this danger, the Editors have come forward to reserve for posterity those treasures which would otherwise sink into watery oblivion […]' A good part of the first volume is taken up with seven chapters (numbered between XXV and LXXIV) of a Lewis Carroll parody titled 'Alice in Oyster-land', and including poems. The second volume contains another Carroll parody, a ten-page poem titled 'The Three Snarks'. A prose piece titled 'The Book of the Miracles of the glorious Martyr Hermione', dating from May 1912, relates to the portrait mummy acquired by the college the year before. There is also a supposed correspondence (in which the magazine's editors are addressed as 'Gentlemen') between the Girtonica Poetical Productions Company Ltd and the Girton librarian, resulting in poems regarding 'the duties of Sub-librarians' and other library matters. Titles of other humorous poems and prose pieces contained in the volume include: 'The Rhyme of the Registrar', 'The Song of the Laboratory', 'Transactions of the Society for the Investigation of the Archaeological Remains in the Vicinity of the Great Palace at Girton', 'Little Rhymes for Little Dons', 'Examination Paper for Research Students', 'Ethnological Notes', 'A Ballad of Germs'. There are also parodies of John Bunyan ('The New Pilgrims' Progress') and Chaucer ('The Cambridge Tales'). The first volume ends with a three-page list of contents, with each item dated, followed by a two-page 'Index of Persons and Pearls'. The contents of the second volume are on both sides of a loosely inserted leaf, which ends with the titles of four items not present in the volume, dating from January to November 1913. Also present in the second volume are three leaves carrying five pages of corrected drafts, including part of one of the pieces not present in the volume, 'The Saga of Reginleif the Black'.