An Essay on the Law of Bailments
by Sir William Jones
Sir William Jones (1566-1650) spent some time at Furnival's Inn before being admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1587. He was called to the bar in 1595. In 1617, he became serjeant-at-law and was appointed chief justice of the King's Bench in Ireland. An appointment as justice to the Court of Common Pleas followed in 1621 and a transfer to the King's Bench in 1624.[1]
Essay on the Law of Bailments, first published in 1781, has been described as "one of the most remarkable books" of its period in which "the author's knowledge of jurisprudence, Roman law, Greek law, Mohammedan law, Mosaic law, Hindu law, and Visigothic law, is applied to elucidate its underlaying principles."[2] Another scholar, while noting that it "has ever been admired for its artistic and scholar-like finish", writes that "it possesses very great merits as a literary production, but moderate value as a legal work for the present day."[3]
Bibliographic Information
Author: Sir William Jones
Title: An Essay on the Law of Bailments.
Published: London: C. Dilly, 1781.
Edition: First edition; 130 pages.
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Thomas Jefferson listed [L]aw of bailments. 8vo. in his inventory of Wythe's Library in the section of titles he kept for himself. Brown's Bibliography[4] includes the 1796 edition published in Boston based on the copy Jefferson sold to the Library of Congress.[5] This may be Wythe's volume but the book includes no markings to verify Wythe's ownership. George Wythe's Library[6] on LibraryThing lists the first edition (1781), but notes that the copy at the Library of Congress may be the proper edition.
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
Bound in contemporary calf, morocco label with author's name. Purchased from Nostre Livers.
View this book in this book in William & Mary's online catalog.
References
- ↑ Christopher W. Brooks, "Jones, Sir William (1566–1640)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 23 Sept 2013. (Subscription required for access.)
- ↑ William Holdsworth, A History of English Law (London: Methuen & Co., Sweet and Maxwell, 1938), 12:393.
- ↑ J. G. Marvin, Legal Bibliography or a Thesaurus of American, English, Irish, and Scotch Law Books (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, Law Booksellers, 1847), 429.
- ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433
- ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 2:309 [no.1982].
- ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on June 28, 2013, http://www.librarything.com/profile/GeorgeWythe
