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Byrne, Wm. Pitt, Mrs. [Julia C.], Compiler. Curiosities of theSearch-Room: A Collection of Serious, and Whimsical Wills. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. ix, 407 pp. Reprinted 2005 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 978-1-58477-590-4. ISBN-10: 1-58477-590-4. Cloth. $95.* Byrne [1819-1894] describes this collection of colorful wills as "a series of romantic narratives." Some are so romantic, in fact, that "those who are at a loss for the plot of a new novel might dip into this collection for novel materials" (ii). Contents include "Excentric Wills," "Puzzling Wills," "Wills in Obsolete Language and and in Rime," "Vindictive Wills," "Bequests to Wives," "Wills in Favour of Dumb Animals," "Disputed Wills" and "Wills of Remarkable Persons."

A starting point for the study of the English Constitution and comparative constitutional law, The Law of the Constitution elucidates the guiding principles of the modern constitution of England: the legislative sovereignty of Parliament, the rule of law, and the binding force of unwritten conventions.

Focusing on the last will and testament as a legal, literary, and cultural document, Cathrine O. Frank examines fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras alongside actual wills, legal manuals relating to their creation, case law regarding their administration, and contemporary accounts of “curious wills” in periodicals. Her study begins with the Wills Act of 1837 and poses two basic questions: What picture of Victorian culture and personal subjectivity emerges from competing legal and literary narratives about the will, and how does the shift from realist to modernist representations of the will accentuate a growing divergence between law and literature? Frank’s examination of works by Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Samuel Butler, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and E.M. Forster reveals the shared rhetorical and cultural significance of the will in law and literature while also highlighting the competition between these discourses to structure a social order that emphasized self-determinism yet viewed individuals in relationship to the broader community. Her study contributes to our knowledge of the cultural significance of Victorian wills and creates intellectual bridges between the Victorian and Edwardian periods that will interest scholars from a variety of disciplines who are concerned with the laws, literature, and history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.