Lot Details
Lot 106
BLACKSTONE, WILLIAM Commentaries on the Laws of England.
Oxford: printed at the Clarendon Press, 1765-66-68-69. First editions. Four volumes, contemporary spotted calf, all edges sprinkled red, neatly rebacked (likely in the 1920s). 10 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches (27.5 x 22 cm); I: (iv), iv-(viii), 473 pp. (correctly ending at 3M1), but the 8 pp. supplement sometimes found is not bound in at end; II: (viii), 520, xx pp., with the Table of Consanguinity and the Table of Descents plates; III: viii, xxvii, 455, (1), pp.; IV: viii, 436, vii, (i), with the 39 pp. of the index at the rear. Light binding wear, some offset from turn-ins, new endpapers, neatly rebacked as noted. Generally a sound copy but with some scattered foxing and stray minor stains, one leaf folded over before binding and thus untrimmed in vol 2., volume IV with tear in a3 just touching text, some evidence of flattened turned-down corners intermittently throughout.
First editions throughout of one of the great classics of English law and jurisprudence. Blackstone's work succeeded that of Edward Coke as the foundational treatise on English law. PMM states "Blackstone's great work on the laws of England is the extreme example of justification of an existing state of affairs by virtue of its history... Until the Commentaries, the ordinary Englishman had viewed the law as a vast, unintelligible and unfriendly machine... Blackstone's great achievement was to popularize the law and the traditions which had influenced its formation... He takes a delight in describing and defending as the essence of the constitution the often anomalous complexities which had grown into the laws of England over the centuries. But he achieves the astonishing feat of communicating this delight, and this is due to a style which is itself always lucid and graceful."
The influence of Blackstone on the Founding Fathers should not be understated. While Jefferson ultimately grew to dislike Blackstone, Hamilton cited the Commentaries in Federalists No. 69 and 84 to bolster the case for the Constitution. Grolier/English 52; PMM 212; Rothschild 407.
C
Additional Notes & Condition Report
No condition report? Click here to request one.