"WHAT SHAKESPEARE HAS BEEN TO LITERATURE… COKE HAS BEEN TO THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LAW OF ENGLAND": SCARCE FIRST AND ONLY EDITION OF COKE'S DECLARATIONS AND OTHER PLEADINGS, 1659

COKE, Edward. The Declarations and Other Pleadings Contained in the Eleven Parts of the Reports of Sir Edward Coke… Sometime Lord Justice of England, and One of His Majestes' Council of Estate. Rendered into English, by W. Hughes… for the Benefit of all Students, and Practizers of the Common Law. London: Printed for W. Lee, D. Pakeman, and G. Bedell, 1659. Small folio (7-1/2 by 11 inches), period-style full dark brown mottled calf, raised bands, red morocco spine label. $2800.

First and only edition in English of this collection of Coke's declarations and other pleadings, not included in his earlier Reports, with engraved frontispiece portrait of Coke, attractively bound.

"What Shakespeare has been to literature, what Bacon has been to philosophy, what the translators of the authorized version of the Bible have been to religion, Coke has been to the public and private law of England" (Reams, Some Makers of English Law, 132). Edward Coke devoted "years in compiling the works which have secured his immortality" (PMM 126). "The First Institute… was the only part of the Institutes published in the author's lifetime… [With this work] Coke determined the course of the development of our modern law" (Reams, 141-47). "Before the Revolution, Coke's Littleton [aka the First Institute] was, as Jefferson reminded Madison…'the universal elementary textbook of law students'" (Randall, Thomas Jefferson, 52-3).

"The first eleven Parts of [Coke's] Reports were published separately in French, between 1600 and 1616. Again printed in 1658, in English, without the Pleadings, which were separately published [in the present volume]… These Pleadings supply the defects in the Reports printed in 1658 and 1680, where the Pleadings are wanting" (Marvin, 209, 212). Wing C4917. Marvin, 212. Sweet & Maxwell, I: 180. Harvard Law Library, I: 411.

Some mild spotting and foxing to text, small and light dampstain to about 30 pages, small hole in portrait repaired. Period-style binding attractive and fine. Scarce.