New Exhibit--Golden Age of Legal Publishing in Massachusetts

This new exhibit is up for viewing in the Rare Book Room, and a digital edition is also available for those unable to visit the physical exhibit or for anyone interested in more information on the featured works.

Massachusetts was an extremely important legal publishing center in the 19th century, when American law book publishing was taking off. Prior to and right after the American Revolution, virtually the only law books being published in the colonies were statutory compilations and reprints of English and continental legal texts. However, by the beginning of the 1800s, a “home-grown” canon of American legal literature began to emerge.

“The Golden Age of Legal Publishing in Massachusetts” traces this progression in Massachusetts legal publishing, beginning with a 1648 statutory compilation and ending with Christopher Columbus Langdell’s famous A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts, which revolutionized teaching at American law schools. Beautiful first editions of Joseph Story's works and Simon Greenleaf's Treatise on the Law of Evidence are among the featured items.

Educational Technology Specialist Chester Kozikowski helped integrate QR codes into the exhibit. This addition blends old and new and allows those touring the exhibit with a smart phone to easily access additional content about the exhibit—audio clips, links to related websites, and a link to the digital edition of the exhibit, which is also available from the exhibit’s webpage.

The exhibit will be open for viewing into Spring 2012.

Rare Book Room will be closed September 5th-11th

The Rare Book Room will be closed from September 5th through September 11th for exhibit work. It will reopen on Monday, September 12th with our new exhibit on Massachusetts legal publishing in the 18th and 19th century. Our lovely collection of Joseph Story's works will be one of the features of the exhibit. Please come see the new exhibit and use the room for studying or research when we reopen!

For all you book lovers out there...

Check out Bibliophemera, one of my favorite blogs. Blogger Chuck Whiting posts regularly on book-related ephemera--trading cards, old book invoices, bookseller billheads, and variety of other fun things. One of my favorite posts deals with the famous Boston publisher Little, Brown & Co., founded in 1837 and still in existence today. Little, Brown was a prolific early American law book publisher, with Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf on its author list. Enjoy!

Treasures in the Stacks

While browsing the shelves in the Rare Book Room, I came across this 1887 edition of The Comic Blackstone, originally published in London in 1846 and written by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett. This edition was revised and expanded by Gilbert's son, Arthur William à Beckett, who, like his father, was a barrister at Gray’s Inn. The Comic Blackstone is a parody of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Like that famous work, this one consists of an introduction and Parts I–IV (The Rights of Persons, The Rights of Things, Of Private Wrongs, and Of Public Wrongs).

The ten full-page colored illustrations in this edition are by Harry Furniss, and include the illustration to the right, entitled "The Study of the Law." A woman appears to be taking notes on the history of the law, as a parade of characters marches backward in time--from Queen Victoria and the Comic Blackstone in the upper left-hand corner to Julius Caesar and Roman law in the bottom left-hand corner. The book is bound in a highly decorative cloth that represents a trend in nineteenth century England and America; it was previously featured in a Spring 2010 exhibit called "Books and Their Covers: Decorative Bindings, Beautiful Books," curated by Karen Beck.

New Acquisition--The Law of Married Women in Massachusetts

This volume was published in Boston in 1878 and written by two members of the Suffolk County Bar Association, Charles Almy and Horace Fuller. In this book, Almy and Fuller dissect the contemporary state of the law as it pertains to married women in the areas of contractual powers, real estate, criminal liability, divorce, child custody, wills and intestacy and many others. The photo to the left captures the first page of the chapter on criminal liability, in which the authors discuss the legal presumption that a married woman's criminal act is not of her own will but rather is a result of her husband's coercion.

The introduction challenges Blackstone's statement that "[e]ven the disabilities which the wife lies under are for the most part intended for her protection and benefit; so great a favorite is the female sex of the law of England." In the introduction, the authors trace the development of Massachusetts law with regard to the rights of women, from a 1787 statute that allowed for conveyances of real estate and contracts of married women when their husbands had absented themselves from the state, to an attempt by the General Court in 1877 and 1878 to pass a bill legalizing contracts between husbands and wives.

Welcome to the collection! Kent's Commentaries, 8th ed.

One of our most recent acquisitions is this lovely four-volume set of the eighth edition of James Kent's Commentaries on American Law (New York: published by William Kent, 1854). Other editions of this seminal treatise on American law are already housed in the Rare Book Room, and we are excited to add this set to the collection. The significance of this particular edition lies in the fact that it was the last one undertaken by James Kent's son, William Kent. Following his father's death in 1847, William took on the duty of updating the treatise and published the sixth, seventh, and eighth editions before his own death in 1861.

It should be noted that William Kent was an important jurist in his own right. He was a Judge of Circuit Court of New York City from 1841-1845; a professor at Harvard Law School; and one of the founders of NYU Law School. Notably, it was William who encouraged his father to compile, edit, synthesize and allow his lecture notes from Columbia Law School to be printed--a suggestion that the elder Kent ultimately heeded, leading to the publication of the first volume of the first edition of Kent's Commentaries in 1826.

New Acquisition--Little Brown Catalog

The most recent addition to the Rare Book Room is A Catalogue of Law and Miscellaneous Books published by Boston's own Little, Brown and Company in July 1862. It is a small catalog, in very nice condition, with original sewn wraps. The first 34 pages list law books for sale, while the remainder of the catalog is devoted to imported English and French books, including law journals. Most of the entries are accompanied by descriptions and often excerpts from reviews. For example, the entry for Kent's Commentaries (a staple of our collection) includes the $16 price tag for the four volume set and a quotation from a reviewer stating that "[i]t is with the immortal Commentaries on the laws of England, that those on American law are now classed, and the names of Blackstone and Kent are fated never to be disjoined."

Little, Brown and Company is one of the oldest publishing houses in the country; it was established in Boston in 1837 by Charles Little and James Brown, and it still exists today as an imprint of Hachette Book Group.