Commentaries on the Laws of England.

Oxford: Clarendon Press,, 1765-69. The key work in English legal literature First editions of all four volumes of the supreme work on English law, Blackstone's magnum opus, a major influence on the Founding Fathers, and the foundation of all legal analysis for the next two centuries. "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). With the ownership signature to vol. IV of "H. Hawkins Tremayne", likely the Reverend Henry Hawkins Tremayne (1741-1829), owner of the Heligan estate in Cornwall, curate at Lostwithiel in the same county, and with significant interests in the Cornish tin mining industry. The gardens he created around Heligan House - the so-called Lost Gardens of Heligan - remain a popular Cornish attraction. Four volumes, quarto (258 x 205 mm). Early red morocco boards rebacked to style (probable remboîtage), dark green morocco labels, spine compartments gilt, marbled endpapers, yellow edges. Housed in custom red cloth slipcase. With 2 engraved tables (1 folding) in volume II. Vol. I with running stain from degradation of formerly inserted botanical specimens, leaves 2A1-2 and 3E4-3F1 with professional consolidation due to the same with slight loss to lettering, general light browning and foxing in places, a few other shadows of pressed leaves and flowers, worming in gutter in vol. I leaves Y4-2D. A good set. Eller, The William Blackstone Collection in the Yale Law Library, pp. 1-2; ESTC T57753; Printing and the Mind of Man 212; Rothschild 407.