Commentaries On The Laws Of England

Oxford: Printed At The Clarendon Press, 1770-69., 1770. 4 Volumes. 4to. pp. 2 p.l., ii, [6], 485; 4 p.l., 520, xix; 4 p.l., 455, [1]blank, xxvii; 4 p.l., 436, vii, [1]blank, [39]index. 2 engraved plates (1 folding) in Vol. II. contemporary calf, rebacked & recornered, preserving spine labels & marbled endleaves (corners worn, foxing to last few leaves in Vol. IV). book labels of the Earl of Sefton. Fourth Edition of Vols. I-III; First Edition of Vol. I. Blackstone’s Commentaries, based on his lectures given at Oxford beginning in 1753, constitute the first attempt since Bracton to provide a coherent account of English law as a whole. "Blackstone inaugurated university instruction in English law…His great achievement…was his reduction to lucid and systematic statement of that disordered bulk of laws which had gradually accumulated since the days of Bracton. Although Blackstone lacked the originality and force of some of his predecessors in English legal literature, such as Bracton, Coke and Hale, his Commentaries, written in a style at once dignified, urbane and clear, are the most complete survey of the English legal system ever composed by a single hand." (H.D.Hazeltine, Encyc. of Social Sciences) Sweet & Maxwell I 27.8. cfMarke p. 34. cfPrinting and the Mind of Man 21. cfGrolier, English 100, 52. cfRothschild 407. See Marvin pp. 122-26 & Winfield pp. 337-340.. 1st Edition.