A Complete Abstract of the Law, Relating to the Growers of Wool, and to the Manufactures of Dealers in all sort of Woolen Commodities...And All the Restrictions Imposed upon and Privileges granted to each Description of Persons above mentioned. Compiles from the latest Authorities, and adapted to familiar Us, By William Radcliffe, Esq. A. B by RADCLIFFE (William):

London: Printed for J. Johsnon..., [ [no date], [1791]. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 197 x 194 mms., pp. 127 [128 Errata, 129 - 130 appendix], rather unappealing bound in green library buckram, with bookplate on front paste-down end-paper of Rochdale Public Libraries (Reserve Stock), library stamp and Dewey numbers on verso of title-page, inner margin of title leaf strengthened. Educated at both Cambridge and Oxford, obtaining his A.B. from the latter in 1785, the author William Radcliffe (1763-1830) was a travel writer, journalist, translator, and the proprietor of The English Chronicle, the late eighteenth-century magazine. He was also the husband and collaborator of a preeminent Gothic novelist of the age, Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823). The ODNB article on the latter has much to say on the former, referring to William as, for instance, a "brilliant linguist with a formidable memory". We can be sure of the identity of the author here, since there is no other William Radcliffe of this period who both obtained a bachelor's degree from specifically Oriel College in the University of Oxford and became a student at Middle Temple in London.� In the online database British Travel Writing, Dr Benjamin Colbert writes that "William Radcliffe was born in December 1763 at Holborn, the son of William Radcliffe, haberdasher, and Deborah Radcliffe. He was educated at St. Paul's School, and went up to university at Cambridge in 1780, but left soon after. He was entered at the Middle Temple in 1783, intending to pursue the law, but this too came to nothing" (<http://www4.wlv.ac.uk/btw/authors/1171>). Strikingly, we now know that Radcliffe's pursuit of the law did indeed come to something. He wrote the highly-detailed law book at hand: A Complete Abstract of the Laws Relating to the Growers of Wool, and to the Manufacturers of, and Dealers in, all Sorts of Woollen Commodities (1791). The work is unrecorded by ESTC and by every library catalogue I have checked. Rictor Norton's biography of Ann Radcliffe is by far the most comprehensive ever attempted. He dwells much on Ann's husband William, referring to him in over 70 pages of the 307-page book. Though Norton discusses other books by William, he does not mention the Complete Abstract, and presumably did not know of its existence (Rictor Norton, The Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe, 1999). Though the Complete Abstract has, for many decades, been extraordinarily elusive, both in terms of physical copies and bibliographical references to it, the Complete Abstract was noted and briefly discussed by one historian in the nineteenth century. This was James Bischoff in his Comprehensive History of the Woollen and Worsted Manufactures, and the Natural and Commercial History of Sheep, from the Earliest Records to the Present Period (1842), Vol. 1, p. 257. Both William's father and Ann's father were haberdashers. This may go some way toward explaining why William would be interested in writing on the wool trade and related occupations, as haberdashery is just such an occupation. It hardly need be said that it is exceedingly rare to find a law book from eighteenth-century England that is both substantial, over a hundred pages, and apparently held by no institutional library. It must be rarer yet that a unique survivor such as this was written by a man with double Oxbridgean credentials, plus Middle Temple membership, and was, to boot, the supportive collaborating husband of a preeminent eighteenth-century woman novelist. Not in ESTC, COPAC, WorldCat, KVK, Library of Congress, or British Library. No microfilm or electronic facsimile found.