THE COMMON LAW. BY O.W. HOLMES, JR.
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881. xvi, 422 pages. Original publisher's brown cloth [lightly sunned]. One small, closed margin tear at bottom of title leaf. Several rather crude tape repairs, otherwise clean. Owner signature. Good or Good plus.
The first issue of the first edition, with printer's imprint "University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge" on verso of title page.
The book is Holmes's monumental contribution to jurisprudence. His service on the Massachusetts and United States Supreme Courts "should not be permitted to obscure his lasting effect on legal scholarship, inspirational to Sir Frederic Pollock 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].
Grolier, American One Hundred 84. Item #40699
Price: $750.00