Sir William Searle Holdsworth: A History of English Law Volume 8: Book IV Part II - The Common Law and It's Rivals 2nd ed (V)

The dust jacket image shown is of the 1966 reprint. The current edition has no dustjacket.

Sir William Searle Holdsworth was professor of constitutional law at University College, London (1903–8). After 1922 he was Vinerian professor of English law at Oxford. Holdsworth's greatest achievement is his History of English Law in 17 Volumes.

Sir William Holdsworth's monumental legal history extends from Anglo-Saxon times to the nineteenth-century Judicature Acts. It was interrupted by his death in 1945, when he had reached Volume 12.

Subsequent volumes have been edited by Professors A. L. Goodhart and H. G. Hanbury, at first from Holdsworth's typescript and later, with more difficulty, from his manuscript notes.

Volume 8 continues Part II of Book IV The Common Law and Its Rivals -covering the period 1485-1700 and dealing specifically with the rules of law. Chapter III deals with contract and quasi-contract, under the headings:-

• The Doctrine of Consideration;
• The Invalidity, the Enforcement, and the Discharge of Contract;
• and Quasi¬Contract.

• Usury and the Usury Laws;
• Negotiable Instruments;
• Banking;
• Commercial Societies;
• Agency; and Bankruptcy;
• and examines Maritime Law and insurance.

• Constructive Treason and Other Cognate Offences;
• Defamation;
• Conspiracy,
• Malicious Prosecution, and Maintenance;
• Legal Doctrines resulting from Laws against Religious Nonconformity;
• Lines of Future Development;
• and the Principles of Liability.