Page "Oxbridge" Paragraph 2

Although both universities were founded more than eight centuries ago, the term Oxbridge is relatively recent.

In William Thackeray's novel Pendennis, published in 1849, the main character attends the fictional Boniface College, Oxbridge.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is the first recorded instance of the word.

Virginia Woolf used it, citing Thackeray, in her 1929 essay A Room of One's Own.

By 1957 the term was used in the Times Educational Supplement and in Universities Quarterly by 1958.