Sir William Searle Holdsworth: A History of English Law Volume 17: General Index

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 classic work on the History of English Law spans the period from Anglo-Saxon times to the Judicature Acts of 1873-75. The first volume made its appearance in 1903 and the work had reached Volume 12 when the author died in 1945.

Succeeding volumes, first based on the author's typescript and later, with more difficulty, on manuscript notes, were edited by Professor A. L. Goodhart and Professor H. G. Hanbury.

An index to the first nine volumes was prepared by Edward Potton and was published in 1932 but, hitherto, there has not been an index to the complete work. This volume remedies the situation and thus provides a key to the treasure house of learning constituted by Sir William Holdsworth's monumental work.

Preface...
I have endeavoured to fashion an adequate key to the treasure house of learning constituted by Sir William Holdsworth's History of English Law.

The index has been prepared from the pages of the text but my wayward mind has been severely disciplined by checking my work against every entry in the indexes at the back of each volume and with the entries in Mr. Edward Patton's index to the first nine volumes published in 1932.

John Burke
January, 1972.