Frederic William Maitland: 4 books

First published in 1895, Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland’s legal classic The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I expanded the work of Sir Edward Coke and William Blackstone by exploring the origins of key aspects of English common law and society and with them...

Published in 1919, thirteen years after Maitland's death, this volume was compiled from his own papers and the notes of his former students.  The result is a scholarly but quite readable overview of English constitutional history, distinguished by Maitland's deep respect for the firm yet flexible nature of the unwritten English constitution.

The Domesday Book was a survey of England completed in 1086 for William the Conqueror. Maitland’s 1897 overview of feudal life, The Doomsday Book and Beyond, was called the greatest single book on English medieval history by Professor J. C. Holt. It influenced a century of scholarship. In addition to the title essay, this book includes “England Before the Conquest” and “The Hide.”

Our patience of centennial celebrations has been somewhat severely tasked this year, nevertheless it may be allowed me to remind you that next year will see the seven-hundredth birthday of English legal memory. The doctrine that our memory goes back to the coronation of Richard I. and no further is of...