Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.. The Common Law. Little Brown, Boston, 1881.
Price: US$300.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: No Previous editions noted. Cover Edges worn and Frayed. Gutters Cracked. some discoloration along edges of cover. Gold print on spine clear and distinct. Burgandy cloth over boards. Stitching of inside pages intact. Very little discoloration of interior pages.
Seller: Books from Patty, Atlanta, GA, U.S.A.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. THE COMMON LAW. Little, Brown & Co.,, Boston:, 1881.
Price: US$950.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: (i)-xvi, 422 pp., Holmes classic written 20 years before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, the book is about common law in the United States, including torts, property, contracts, and crime. It is written as a series of lectures. One of the most famous aphorisms to be drawn from this book occurs on the first page: "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience." Holmes's pronouncement is a subtle qualification of a dictum by the famous seventeenth-century English jurist Sir Edward Coke: "Reason is the life of the law."[2] Size: 8vo.
Seller: Quaker Hill Books, Redding, CT, U.S.A.
HOLMES, Oliver Wendell, Jr.. Common Law. Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1881.
Price: US$950.00 + shipping
Description: The Common Law. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881. Full Description: HOLMES, O[liver] W[endell], Jr. The Common Law. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881. First edition, first issue ("University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge" on two lines). Octavo (8 3/16 x 5 3/8 inches; 208 x 137 mm). xvi, 422, [2, blank] pp. Original russet cloth with covers ruled in blind and spine ruled and lettered in gilt. Some minor chips to head and tail of the spine and some very slight rubbing to corners. Spine the slightest bit darkened. Previous owner's old ink signature dated 1918 on front free endpaper. Some small dark dampstaining to top margin and rear endpaper, not touching text. Still a near fine copy of this classic of American law. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), son of American man of letters Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), "was a professor of law at Harvard and served as chief justice of the Massachusetts supreme court (1899-1902) and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1902-32). His writings include The Common Law (1881), Speeches (1891, 1913), and Collected Legal Papers (1920), all exhibiting his distinction of mind and consistently liberal views" (The Oxford Companion to American Literature). "Holmes's great contributions to American constitutional law from his service on the Supreme Court of the United Statesâ"mostly in dissents which are now sanctifiedâ"should not be permitted to obscure his lasting effect on legal scholarship, inspirational to Sir Frederick Pollack 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, 100 American). Grolier, 100 American, 84. HBS 69006. $950.
Seller: Heritage Book Shop, ABAA, Beverly Hills, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1000.00 + shipping
Description: xvi, 422 pp. 8vo, green pebbled cloth gilt-lettered on the spine. First edition. Adhesive stains from bookplate removal on front pastedown; inked ownership inscription within a rectangular rule on flyleaf; otherwise a very good copy with some moderate wear to the extremities of the spine. The lower right corner of the front board is bumped. The gold on the spine is bright. Clean, tight and sound.
Seller: Jeffrey H. Marks, Rare Books, ABAA, Rochester, NY, U.S.A.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.. The Common Law, First Edition, Boston, 1881, Law-Calf Binding. , 1881.
Price: US$1750.00 + shipping
Description: Boston: Little, Brown, And Company, 1881. First Edition of The Common Law in the Scarce Law-Calf Binding Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. [1841-1935]. The Common Law. Boston: Little, Brown, And Company, 1881. [i]-xvi, 422 pp. Octavo (8-1/4" x 5-1/4"). Original law calf, rebacked retaining existing spine with raised bands and lettering piece, blind frames to boards, hinges mended. A few light scuffs to boards, a few small chips to board edges, faint creases to spine, corners bumped and moderately worn, early owner signature (Samuel L. Morris, Jr., 1/13/1908) to front and rear pastedowns. Moderate toning to interior, offsetting, light soiling and a few tiny chips to edges of endleaves. $1,750. * First edition, second issue, with the one-line printer statement reading "The University Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A." at foot of the title page, verso, and foot of p. 422. As Friedman points out, "The Common Law was easily the most distinguished book on law by an American published between 1850 and 1900." In contrast to earlier Anglo-American jurists, and the reigning positivist ethos of the nineteenth century, Holmes proposed that the common law was not a science founded on abstract principles but a body of practices that responded to particular situations. This functionalist interpretation led to his radical idea that law was not discovered, but invented. This theme is announced at the beginning of Lecture I: "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience" (1). "Oliver Wendell Holmes and The Common Law," Meyer Boswell Books, Inc., Rare and Unusual Law Books, Catalogue Fourteen 2. Friedman, A History of American Law 544. Grolier Club, One Hundred Influential American Books 84.
Seller: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., ABAA ILAB, Clark, NJ, U.S.A.