Law Tracts, In Two Volumes, Oxford, 1762, First edition

1762. Oxford, 1762. 1st ed.. Oxford, 1762. 1st ed. Attractively Bound First Edition of Blackstone's Law Tracts Blackstone, Sir William [1723-1780]. Law Tracts, In Two Volumes. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1762. Two volumes. [iv], 257, [7]; [iv], cxv, [5], 135, [9] pp. 4 parts, each with divisional title page. 8 copperplate facsimiles (of royal seals), copperplate Table of Descents and folding Table of Consanguinity. Octavo (7-3/4" x 5"). Recent period-style quarter calf over marbled boards, lettering pieces, blind fillets and gilt volume numbers and publication dates to spines, speckled edges, pastedowns and free endpapers renewed. Light toning to interiors, early owner signature (J. Mackelston) and few brief annotation to front endleaf of Volume I, which has a trimmed bottom edge and light shelfwear, two later owner signatures (Hugh Lloyd and Hugh Bangor, dated 1776) to head of Volume I's title page. A handsome set. $2,000. * First edition. The first collected edition, with revisions, of five early works, several of which are quite rare in their original editions. They are reprinted here "with a few corrections and additions"; each of the volumes contains a general index. The works are, Volume I: An Essay on Collateral Consanguinity (1750, Blackstone's first legal publication), Considerations on Copyholders (1758), Treatise on the Law of Descents in Fee-Simple (1759), Volume II: The Great Charter (1759) and Magna Carta, Carta de Forest, Etc. (1759). A "third" edition was published in 1771. (There is no evidence of a second edition, unless one counts the pirated Dublin reissue of the first, which was printed in 1767.) The contents of the two editions differ. The first does not have Analysis of the Laws of England (1756) or Observations on the Oxford Press (1757); the "third" does not have Treatise on the Law of Descents in Fee-Simple. Eller, The William Blackstone Collection in the Yale Law Library 238. Laeuchli, A Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone 551.