Difference between revisions of "General Abridgment of Law and Equity"

Revision as of 10:42, 23 July 2013

by Charles Viner

Viner entered the Middle Temple in 1700, and although he was never called to the bar he kept chambers in King's Bench Walk, Temple, from where he gave occasional legal advice. His real interest, however, was more in the literature of the law than in its practice. He began to collect notes of recently decided cases in 1703, but devoted the greater part of his life to the exhaustive arrangement of existing legal materials under alphabetical headings, based on the works of his predecessors Robert Brooke and Henry Rolle. His General abridgment of law and equity: alphabetically digested under proper titles, with notes and references to the whole was published in 23 volumes between 1742 and 1757 (the final volume posthumously). This was printed, reputedly under Viner's direction at his own home, on paper watermarked with his monogram, published by him personally, and the earlier volumes sold from his chambers in the Temple. Though unwieldy to use, it was the most comprehensive attempt to render accessible the legal materials printed before his time, and it remains an invaluable key to these works. An Alphabetical Index to the work was published by Robert Kelham in 1758, and incorporated into the second edition of the Abridgment (1791–4).^[1]

Bibliographic Information

Author: Charles Viner, (bap. 1678, d. 1756)

Title: A General Abridgment of Law and Equity: Alphabetically Digested under Proper Titles with Notes and References to the Whole

Publication Info: Aldershot: Printed for the Author, by Agreement with the Law-Patentees, 1741-1753.

Edition:

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

External Links

Google Books

References

1. ↑ David Ibbetson, ‘Viner, Charles (bap. 1678, d. 1756)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 accessed 30 May 2013