A New Abridgment of the Law..., 5 Volumes. London, 1768-1770

1768. London: His Majesty's Law Printers, 1768-1770.. London: His Majesty's Law Printers, 1768-1770. A Complete Set of Bacon's Abridgment, "Quite a Law Library in Itself" Bacon, Mathew [fl. 1730]. [Gilbert, Sir Jeffrey (1674-1726)]. [Sayer, Joseph (fl. 1750)]. [Ruffhead, Owen (1723-1769)]. A New Abridgment of the Law. Corrected; With Many Additional Notes and References. London: Printed by His Majesty's Law Printers, For J. Worrall and Co. [et al.], 1768-1770. 5 volumes (the fifth dated 1770). Complete set. Folio (14-1/4" x 7-3/4"; 36.2 x 19.70 cm). Contemporary calf, rebacked, period-style spines with raised bands, lettering pieces and gilt ornaments, fillets, volume numbers and publication dates, corners of Volumes 1, 3, 4 and 5 restored, blind tooling to board edges, endpapers renewed. Light rubbing and some shallow scuffing to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities with light wear to spine ends, heavier rubbing to corners, which are bumped, hinges just starting at ends. Moderate toning, negligible light crinkling to heads of text blocks, light spotting and foxing in places, moderate staining to fore-margins of Volume 2, lower outside corner of leaf 5H (pp. 393-394) in Volume 4 lacking with no loss to text, minor worming to margins of Volume 5 in a few places, early owner signature (John Lane) to its title page. A very good set. $2,500. * Third edition. Bacon's Abridgment is a digest of cases and treatises written by Gilbert. It was popular among English and American practitioners into the early nineteenth century because its logical system of subdivisions within each title was a significant improvement over previous compendia. It was also considerably more comprehensive. As Marvin notes, it was "quite a law library in itself." Jefferson, who owned a copy of the fifth edition, saw it as the definitive statement of English law, the successor to the works of Bracton and Coke. The Abridgment was compiled and mostly edited by Bacon. The first volume was published in 1736 and new volumes were issued until the work was interrupted by Bacon's death. (His last entry was "Sheriff.") The rest of the work was edited by Sayer and Ruffhead. It went through some seven English and two American editions, the latter edited by Bird Wilson and John Bouvier. Marvin, Legal Bibliography 85. Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson 1792 (citing the fifth edition). English Short-Title.