Blackstone, William
Rare legal books by William Blackstone, including first editions and library sets in fine bindings.
The legal writer and judge Sir William Blackstone established English law as an academic discipline. He presented a successful course of private lectures, which led to his appointment as the foundation Vinerian professor of common law at Oxford, and finally to the publication of his acclaimed Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–9). Blackstone’s Commentaries, reprinted countless times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, became a library staple, making the concept of English common law and the principles that lay behind its gradual accretion accessible to all levels of society.
BLACKSTONE, Sir William.
Commentaries on the Laws of England. 1765
£15,000
First edition. "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...
4 volumes, quarto (269 × 209 mm). Contemporary tan calf, skilfully rebacked and relined to style, red and green morocco labels, boards with gilt rope-roll border,... Read more
BLACKSTONE, William.
Law Tracts, in two volumes. 1762
£2,500
First Collected Edition, reprinting, "with a few corrections and additions", four early works: An Essay on Collateral Consanguinity (1750; Blackstone's first legal publication),...
2 volumes, octavo. Contemporary calf, red morocco labels, sides with double blind rules and scalloped inner border. With 8 engraved illustrations of seals and 2... Read more
BLACKSTONE, William.
Commentaries on the Laws of England. 1770
£2,500
Fourth edition. "Until the Commentaries, the ordinary Englishman had viewed the law as a vast, unintelligible and unfriendly machine; nothing but trouble, even danger, was to be...
4 volumes, quarto (273 × 218 mm). Contemporary pale tan legal calf, red morocco lettering-pieces, green morocco numbering-pieces, raised bands, sides with a blind... Read more
BLACKSTONE, William.
Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books. 1770
£1,500
Fourth edition. "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...
4 volumes, quarto (267 × 210 mm). 19th-century tan calf, spines gilt in compartments, red and black morocco labels. Bookplate of William Baker to each volume.... Read more
