Frederic William Maitland

A Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality is a window to one of the most important historians of all time. The exclusive Liberty Fund edition of F.W. Maitland's classic includes a note on Maitland by Charles Haskins and a general account of Maitland's life and work, "The Historical Spirit Incarnate: Frederic William Maitland, " by Robert Schuyler. A historian's historian, F.W. Maitland was never to be caught indulging in fanciful speculation about times long past. Rather, he said, "We shall have to think away distinctions which seem to us as clear as the sunshine; we must think ourselves back into a twilight." To achieve this discipline, Maitland chose his tools of historical analysis with a lawyer's care. For example, to decipher works of medieval law written in Anglo-French patois, he became "grammarian, orthographer, and phoneticist." Thus did none other than Lord Acton declare Maitland to be "the ablest historian in England." In 1875, at only twenty-five years of age, Maitland, in pursuit of a fellowship in Cambridge University, submitted a remarkable work entitled "A Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality as Ideals of English Political History from the Time of Hobbes to the Time of Coleridge."--Publisher description.

"With his wit, eloquence and shrewd perception of contemporary morals, Samuel Johnson was the most versatile of Augustan writers. His dictionary, dramas and poetry established his reputation, but it was the essays published in The Rambler, The Adventurer and The Idler that demonstrated the range of his talent. Tackling ethical questions such as the importance of self-knowledge, awareness of mortality, the role of the novel, and, in a lighter vein, marriage, sleep and deceit, these brilliant and thought-provoking essays are a mirror of the time in which they were written and a testament to Johnson's stature as the leading man of letters of his age." "This new edition contains a broad selection of essays presenting both the forcefully argued moral pieces of Johnson's middle years and the more light-hearted essays of his later work. The introduction places the works in their historical and literary context, and there is also a chronology of Johnson's life and times."--Jacket.

(From the introduction to the book) The following pages contain a reprint of a series of articles upon the chief epochs in the history of English law which were contributed to Social England, edited by H. D. Traill, D.C.L. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1899), by the late Prof. Frederic W. Maitland of Cambridge University, and Prof. Francis C. Montague of University College,London. These articles supplied what long had been needed for general readers and for law student -- a brief but comprehensive, accurate but untechnical account of the origin and growth of English law. ... this series of articles now forms the best available introduction to English legal history.

Contribution by Virginia (Stephen) Woolf ; p. 474-476. -cf Kirkpatrick, B1.Contribution by Virginia (Stephen) Woolf ; p. 474-476. -cf Kirkpatrick :B1. "Leslie Stephen's works": p. 497-499.

"Being precedents for use in seignorial and other local courts, together with select pleas from the Bishop of Ely's court of Littleport."