Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) stands as the first great effort to reduce the English common law to a unified and rational system. Blackstone demonstrated that the English law as a system of justice was comparable to Roman law and the civil law of the Continent. Clearly and elegantly written, the work achieved immediate renown and exerted a powerful influence on legal education in England and in America which was to last into the late nineteenth century. The book is regarded not only as a legal classic but as a literary masterpiece. Previously available only in an expensive hardcover set, Commentaries on the Laws of England is published here in four separate volumes, each one affordably priced in a paperback edition. These works are facsimiles of the eighteenth-century first edition and are undistorted by later interpolations. Each volume deals with a particular field of law and carries with it an introduction by a leading contemporary scholar. Introducing this second volume, Of the Rights of Things, A. W. Brian Simpson discusses the history of Blackstone's theory of various aspects of property rights—real property, feudalism, estates, titles, personal property, and contracts—and the work of his predecessors.

*** Sanctuary is sometimes used loosely as synonymous with refuge but Geoffrey Care’s book examines the true early meaning of sanctuary as applied by the church which gave respite, albeit for a limited time, from both authority and the mob. His diligent research takes us through a series of delightful cameo sketches of those who sought sanctuary and in so doing gives us an insight into mediaeval life and times... Keith Best, Barrister, former MP and Chief Executive of both the Immigration Advisory Service and Freedom from Torture and a member of the Foreign Secretary’s Panel on Torture Prevention. *** This is a remarkable book on the subject of sanctuary by Geoffrey Care. This issue is of increasing urgency and international importance. ...Geoffrey’s book will appeal to many as a book that covers a serious topic in an appealing form.... His publication is timely and compassionate. Bernar Moody, Beverley.

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 2 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.