Beschreibung:

BLACKSTONE, William (1723-1780). Commentaries on the Laws of England . Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press, 1765-1769.
BLACKSTONE, William (1723-1780). Commentaries on the Laws of England . Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press, 1765-1769. 4 volumes, 4° (270 x 208 mm). 2 engraved tables (one folding) in Volume II. (A few pale spots.) Contemporary sprinkled calf, board edges gilt, edges red, red and black morocco lettering-pieces gilt (some light wear to extremities, rebacked by J. Macdonald Co. preserving original lettering-pieces). Provenance : William Badaler (?) (manuscript note on verso of flyleaf); Earl Waldegrave (armorial bookplate on pastedown); The Newberry Library, Chicago (bookplate on pastedown with manuscript withdrawn notice dated 24 August 1993). FIRST EDITION . "Blackstone's great work on the laws of England is the extreme example of justification of an existing state of affairs by virtue of its history... Until the Commentaries , the ordinary Englishman had viewed the law as a vast, unintelligible and unfriendly machine... Blackstone's great achievement was to popularize the law and the traditions which had influenced its formation... He takes a delight in describing and defending as the essence of the constitution the often anomalous complexities which had grown into the laws of England over the centuries. But he achieves the astonishing feat of communicating this delight, and this is due to a style which is itself always lucid and graceful" ( PMM ). Without the 8-page "Supplement to the First Edition" in Volume I, which was issued later and is generally absent in earlier copies. Grolier English 52; PMM 212; Rothschild 407.