“A VAST INFLUENCE BOTH IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA”: 1773 FIRST OXFORD OCTAVO EDITION OF BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES

BLACKSTONE, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England. In Four Books. Oxford: Clarendon Press, for William Strahan, Thomas Cadell, and Daniel Prince, 1773. Four volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown calf rebacked, raised bands, red and black morocco spine labels. $3500.

1773 Clarendon Press first octavo edition of Blackstone’s landmark Commentaries, the fifth Oxford edition overall, perhaps the single most important legal work in Anglo-American history, the first edition to contain the Table of Precedence.

One of the greatest achievements in legal history, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England was instrumental to the definition of the English constitution and important in establishing common law as the basis of the American legal system. "The Commentaries are not only a statement of the law of Blackstone's day, but the best history of English law as a whole which had yet appeared… the skillful manner in which Blackstone uses his authorities new and old, and the analogy of other systems of law, to illustrate the evolution of the law of his day, had a vast influence, both in England and America" (NYU, 34). The Commentaries helped clarify English law by introducing to the public its formative traditions. "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 did for the English what the imperial publication of Roman law did for the people of Rome" (PMM 212). Oxford University first entered the print trade around 1480 and the press became an official part of the University by decree of the Star Chamber in 1586. It was flourishing in the seventeenth century but had fallen into decline in the first half of the eighteenth century. It moved to the Clarendon Building in 1713, and "between 1755 and 1757 Blackstone [as an official delegate of the Oxford Press] radically reformed the management and economics of the press; in 1780 the University… for the first time, was in effective control of all printing and publishing in its name" (Eliot, History of the Oxford University Press, 10). This edition is the first to include the Table of Precedence (Volume I, p. 405). With the engraved Table of Consanguinity and the Table of Descents (folding plate) in Volume II. Laeuchli 10. Sweet and Maxwell II, 5. Rees, 27. Harvard Law Catalogue I, 187. Bookplates, owner signatures.

A bit of wormholing in rear index of last volume only; wear to contemporary leather boards. A very good copy.