Common Law

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881. The Common Law. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881.

Full Description:

HOLMES, O[liver] W[endell], Jr. The Common Law. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881.

First edition, first issue ("University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge" on two lines). Octavo (8 3/16 x 5 3/8 inches; 208 x 137 mm). xvi, 422, [2, blank] pp.

Original russet cloth with covers ruled in blind and spine ruled and lettered in gilt. Some minor chips to head and tail of the spine and some very slight rubbing to corners. Spine the slightest bit darkened. Previous owner's old ink signature dated 1918 on front free endpaper. Some small dark dampstaining to top margin and rear endpaper, not touching text. Still a near fine copy of this classic of American law.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), son of American man of letters Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), "was a professor of law at Harvard and served as chief justice of the Massachusetts supreme court (1899-1902) and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1902-32). His writings include The Common Law (1881), Speeches (1891, 1913), and Collected Legal Papers (1920), all exhibiting his distinction of mind and consistently liberal views" (The Oxford Companion to American Literature).

"Holmes's great contributions to American constitutional law from his service on the Supreme Court of the United States—mostly in dissents which are now sanctified—should not be permitted to obscure his lasting effect on legal scholarship, inspirational to Sir Frederick Pollack and Frederic William Maitland. This brilliant exposition, as effective on English scholarship and legal thinking as on American, of the true nature of law both as a development from the past and an organism of the present, blew fresh air into lawyers' minds encrusted with Blackstone and Kent" (Grolier, 100 American).

Grolier, 100 American, 84.

HBS 69006.

$950.