William Blackstone. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1765-1769.. First editio... (Total: 4 Items)

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"It Is Better That Ten Persons Escape, Than That One Innocent Suffer."

William Blackstone. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1765-1769.

First edition, with the "Supplement to the First Edition" which was issued later and is usually lacking. Four quarto volumes. viii, 473; 520, xix; 455, xxvii; 436, vii pages. Index. With the engraved tables of "Consanguinity" and "Descents" in Volume II.

Contemporary full calf. Raised bands. Leather title labels to spines with gilt lettering. In a custom slipcase with felt-lined compartments for each volume. Protective fabric jackets for each volume with title number in gilt on spine. The spine of the slipcase is in leather with gilt lettering and shows some staining. Hinges cracked, joints tender, but bindings are tight. Internally clean and fresh. A bright set, in very good condition.

"The volumes were not all issued at once, but followed one another at different times during a period of four years. They were printed at the Clarendon Press, which Blackstone, when appointed a delegate in 1755, had 'found languishing in a lazy obscurity,' and whose quickening was in no small measure due to his 'repeated conferences with the most eminent masters, in London and other places, with regard to the mechanical part of printing,' his recommendations, and to his own examples of good typography supplied in the Magna Charta, published in 1758, and in this his magnum opus" (Grolier Club).

ESTC, T57753. Grolier Club: Bibliographical Notes on One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature, 121.