A General Abridgment of Law and Equity
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.
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: First edition; twenty-three volumes and index.
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Wythe definitely owned this title—a copy at the Library of Congress includes his bookplate in each volume.[2] It is also listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as Viner’s abr. F. to Y. inclus. 10.v. fol. under "[Commo]n law" in the section of books kept by Thomas Jefferson. Two of the Wythe Collection sources (Brown's Bibliography[3] and George Wythe's Library[4] on LibraryThing) include "Viner's Abridgment."
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
Set includes Robert Kelham's An Alphabetical Index to All the Abridgments of Law and Equity: and to Several Books of the Crown law, Conveyancing, and Practice, with Their Divisions and Subdivisions; Chiefly Calculated to Facilitate the References to the General Abridgment of Law and Equity, by Charles Viner, Esq (London, In the Savoy: Printed by Henry Lintot ... for the author, and sold by J. Worrall, 1758).
View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.
External Links
References
- ↑ 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
- ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 2:222 [no.1791].
- ↑ 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
- ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on June 28, 2013, http://www.librarything.com/profile/GeorgeWythe
