C-85. Law Books: History & Connoisseurship - Advance Reading List

• Preliminary advices

  Please read as many of the readings as your time and/or interests dictate. Items marked with asterisks “***” are particularly recommended. It is NOT expected that you read every work in this list. Note that Law Library Journal articles from 2011 onward are available free of charge at https://www.aallnet.org/llj_issue/; earlier articles are available in HeinOnline. Items that aren’t online will be available in a Google Drive folder a few weeks before class begins.

• Book history and bibliography

  ***Carter, John. ABC for Book Collectors. Unfortunately, the latest edition (9th ed.; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2016; edited by Nicolas Barker & Simran Thadani) is currently out of print. However, the 8th edition can be downloaded as a PDF file, courtesy of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and second-hand copies of various editions are usually available on Abebooks.com. A copy of the physical book is highly recommended, in part because the endpapers and paste-downs are essential parts of this indispensable reference work.

  “Extravagantly Large Paper.” From the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Collation blog, a post by Caroline Duroselle-Melish on large-paper copies of Littleton’s Tenures. https://collation.folger.edu/2015/11/extravagantly-large-paper/

  *** Hoeflich, M. H. “Legal History and the History of the Book: Variations on a Theme.” University of Kansas Law Review 46 (1998), 415-431. http://hdl.handle.net/1808/919

  “My True Meaning: emotions in seventeenth-century wills.” Also from the Folger’s Collation blog, a post by Elizabeth DeBold. https://collation.folger.edu/2022/07/emotions-in-seventeenth-century-wills/

  Osler, Douglas J. “Dies diem docet.” Ius Commune 18 (1991), 207-224.
  https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/2241781/ic18_07_osler.pdf

  Solon Cristobal, Kasia. “From Law in Blackletter to Blackletter Law.” Law Library Journal 108:2 (2016), 181-216. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2821866

  ***Widener, Michael. “From Law Book to Legal Book: The Origin of a Species.” Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History (Rg) 29 (2021), 431-444. https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/17925

• Anglo-American law

  ***Baker, John H. “Legal Literature” in his Introduction to English Legal History (5th ed.; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 185-205. Earlier editions are OK.

  ***Baker, John H. “The Books of the Common Law” in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume III, 1400-1557 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 411-432 and “English Law Books and Legal Publishing” in The Cambridge History of the Book, Volume IV, 1557-1696 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 474-503.

  Friedman, Lawrence M. A History of American Law, 2nd edition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), pp. 90-104, 322-333, 621-632.

  ***Parrish, Jenni. “Law Books and Legal Publishing in America, 1760-1840.” Law Library Journal 72:3 (Summer 1979), 355-365; scan rest of article. http://repository.uchastings.edu/faculty_scholarship/615

  ***Prest, Wilfrid. “Law Books.” In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume V, 1695-1830 (Michael Suarez & Michael Turner, eds.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 791-806.

  Ross, Richard J. “The Commoning of the Common Law: The Renaissance Debate over Printing English Law, 1520–1640.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 146:2 (1998), 323–461. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/penn_law_review/vol146/iss2/1/

  Seipp, David J. “The Law’s Many Bodies, and the Manuscript Tradition in English Legal History.” Journal of Legal History 25:1 (April 2004), 74-83.
  https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2608/

  ***Simpson, A. W. B. “The Rise and Fall of the Legal Treatise: Legal Principles and the Forms of Legal Literature.” University of Chicago Law Review 48:3 (Summer 1981), 632-679. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol48/iss3/4/

• Roman, canon & civil law

  ***Apple, James G., & Robert P. Deyling. “A Primer on the Civil-Law System.” Washington, D.C.: Federal Judicial Center, n.d. https://www.fjc.gov/content/primer-civil-law-system-0

  ***Hoeflich, Michael H. “Bibliographical Perspectives on Roman and Civil Law,” Law Library Journal 89:1 (Winter 1997): 41-54.

  ***Pennington, Kenneth. “Roman and Secular Law in the Middle Ages.” [Feel free to skip over the passages of Latin text.] http://legalhistorysources.com/Law508/histlaw.htm

  ***Pennington, Kenneth. “A Short History of Canon Law from Apostolic Times to 1917.” See especially from page 14 onward. http://legalhistorysources.com/Canon%20Law/PenningtonShortHistoryCanonLaw.pdf

  Reich, Peter L. “Siete Partidas in My Saddlebags: The Transmission of Hispanic Law from Antebellum Louisiana to Texas and California.” Tulane European & Civil Law Forum 22 (2007), 79-88. https://journals.tulane.edu/teclf/article/view/1779

  Rueda Ramírez, Pedro. “Law Books in the Hispanic Atlantic World: Spaces, Agents and the Consumption of Texts in the Early Modern Period.” Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History (Rg) 29 (2021), 100-113. http://rg.rg.mpg.de/en/article_id/1396

  Stein, Peter. “Justinian’s Compilation: Classical Legacy and Legal Source.” Tulane European & Civil Law Forum 8 (1993), 1-15. https://journals.tulane.edu/teclf/article/view/1434

  ***Wallinga, Tammo. “The Common History of European Legal Scholarship. ” Erasmus Law Review 4:1 (2011): 3-20. https://doi.org/10.5553/ELR221026712011004001002

  Watson, Alan. “The Importance of ‘Nutshells’.” American Journal of Comparative Law 42:1 (Winter 1994), 1-23. https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/668/

• Book collecting

  Adam Weinberger Rare Book Buyer (YouTube), https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLzOmHTvVTv7Ejlz_sY2Z7g/videos. Weinberger has produced a few dozen entertaining and informative videos on the rare book trade and rare books in general. See especially “Ten Rare Book Words That Will Change Your Life,” https://youtu.be/PlTyCMG8CUQ.

  ***Reese, William. “Books in Hard Times.” A talk given at the Grolier Club symposium with the same title, 22 Sept. 2009. https://www.williamreesecompany.com/pages/articles/1/books-in-hard-times

  ***Traister, Daniel. “Are There New Paths for Book Collectors?” Talk delivered to the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, Philadelphia, 10 May 1998. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~traister/newpaths.html

  ***Widener, Michael. “Morris Cohen and the Art of Book Collecting.” Law Library Journal 104:1 (Winter 2012), 39-43. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/17690

  Wroth, Lawrence. “The Bibliographical Way.” Available online at http://pplspcoll.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/the-bibliographical-way/. This essay originated as an address at a joint meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America and the American Historical Association, 30 Dec. 1936, and was later published in The Colophon (Spring 1938) and reprinted in About Books: A Gathering of Essays (1941).

   

• Online exhibits

  Book exhibitions are themselves “mini-collections,” books with a common feature or theme brought together by the curator to tell a story. Take a look at these examples.

  250 Years of Blackstone’s Commentaries (Yale Law Library). http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/52

  Civil, Canon and Common: Aspects of Legal History (Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas). http://hdl.handle.net/1808/11766

  Digital Exhibits (Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room). Links to a number of exhibits; see especially “Collectors on Collecting.” https://lira.bc.edu/collection/a4e9cbfb-c533-4f96-afba-6683f475c47f

  Free Tom Mooney! An Exhibition of the Yale Law Library’s Tom Mooney Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/82

  The Law Dictionary Collection (Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas at Austin). http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/law-dictionaries

  Learning the Law: The Book in Early Legal Education (Yale Law Library) http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/107

  Murder and Women in 19th-Century America (Yale Law Library) http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/80

  Precedents So Scrawl’d and Blurr’d: Readers’ Marks in Law Books (Yale Law Library) https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/marks-in-lawbooks

  Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (University of Minnesota Law Library). http://moses.law.umn.edu/transitional-justice/

  Trial by Media: The Queen Caroline Affair (Yale Law Library & Lewis Walpole Library) https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/trialbymedia

   

• Assignments from ABC for Book Collectors

  The contents of the ABC should be thoroughly mastered, for it is impossible to talk intelligently about rare books without an understanding of what is a very specialized terminology. A good way to approach this task is to study the preliminaries and the definitions of the terms printed in boldface in the list below. Then learn the definitions of the remaining terms on this page. Finally, read this irresistible book straight through.

  The course will assume familiarity with the terms listed here.

  Leaf
  Recto
  Verso
  Format
  Sheet
  Gatherings
  Signatures
  Collation
  Blank leaves
  Forme
  Folio
  Quarto
  Octavo
  Duodecimo
  Cover
  Spine
  Hinges
  Joints
  Edges
  Margins
  Uncut
  Unopened
  Endpapers
  Paste-down
  Preliminary leaves
  Fly-leaf
  Half-title
  Frontispiece
  Title
  Bibliography
  Edition and impression
  Issues and states
  First edition

  Association copy
  Auctions
  Bindings
  Boards
  Book-plate
  Booksellers’ catalogues
  Broadside
  Calf
  Catchword
  Condition
  Disbound
  Facsimiles and fakes
  Fly-sheet
  Foxed
  Half bound
  Imprint
  Incunable
  Inscribed copy
  Law calf
  McKerrow
  Original state/condition
  Presentation copy
  Provenance
  Publisher’s cloth
  Rarity
  Re-backed
  Shoulder-note
  Side-notes
  Trade binding
  Variant
  Vellum
  Wrappers