Browse by Tags

A trophy of the War of 1812

Earlier this week -- August 19, to be exact -- was the 200th anniversary of one of the U.S. Navy's most famous battles, the victory of the U.S.S. Constitution over the H.M.S. Guerriere in the War of 1812. A trophy from that battle resides in the Yale Law Library's Rare Book Collection. The trophy...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 08-24-2012
Early Law Books and Their Readers, Part 2

In my previous post I sought help identifying a signature that is found in many of the books that came from the library of the German legal historian Konrad von Maurer (1823-1902). Von Maurer's law books were acquired in 1904 by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York , and later came...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 08-01-2012
Early Law Books and Their Readers

On July 23, I am giving a brief presentation, "Early Law Books and Their Readers: Examples from the Yale Law Library," at the American Association of Law Libraries 2012 annual meeting in Boston. It is part of a session, "Connecting Roman Law Books: Commentaries, Marginalia, Bookplates...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 07-14-2012
Justinian and the scandal-mongers

One of my spare-time projects is trolling the Rare Books stacks looking for law books with illustrations, and also bookplates (you can see the most recent finds in our Flickr photostream ). That's how I discovered the allegorical frontispiece to the Vita Iustiniani M. atque Theodorae (1731) by Johann...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 05-18-2012
New on the shelves: Pocket edition of the Institutes

One of my favorite recent acquisitions is a tiny pocket edition of Justinian's Institutes , printed in 1510 by Jean Petit. It measures only 3.375 inches tall (9.5 centimetres). Our copy is bound in gilt tooled vellum over pasteboards, with much of the gold gilt rubbed off. The flyleaf bears an early...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 10-10-2011
Justinian's Institutes, illustrated

Among the most outstanding illustrated law books of all times is an edition of Justinian's Institutes published by a member of the Giunta printing dynasty of Venice, Instituta novissime recognita aptissimisq[ue] figuris exculta (Venice: Luca-Antonio Giunta, 1516). The "aptissimae figurae"...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 03-04-2011
New Flickr images: Tractatus iuris

There are two new sets of images in the Rare Book Collection's Flickr galleries : Tractatus iuris (1549) and Tractatus universi iuris (1584-86) . Apart from the title pages, you won't see any pretty pictures in these image sets. What you will see are tables of contents and indexes of authors...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 10-28-2010
Provenance puzzle #2 -- solved!

I have two people to thank for independently solving my Provenance Puzzle #2 : my friend the San Antonio tax attorney and bibliophile Farley Katz, and Christopher Frey of Antiquariat Inlibris Gilhofer in Vienna. The armorial stamp, shown at left, is of the Austrian nobleman Joseph Anton von der Halden...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 02-28-2010
Medieval Manuscripts in Law Book Bindings, no. 16

Fragment: Codex Iustiniani (Italy, probably Bologna) Date: c. 1275-1325 Found in: Savoy (Duchy). Statuta Sabaudie . [Turin: Bernardus de Sylva, 1530.] It was probably not mere coincidence that a leaf of the Corpus iuris civilis was used to cover this volume of legal statutes from the Duchy of Savoy....

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 02-16-2010
A visit from Yale's Directed Studies students

I was pleased to welcome about 30 freshmen from Yale's Directed Studies program to the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Room on November 4. They were accompanied by three of the Directed Studies faculty: Edwin Duval (French), Paul Freedman (History), and Justin Zaremby (Yale College and Law '10). Directed...

Posted to Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog (Weblog) by Mike Widener on 11-05-2009

Page 1 of 2 (19 items) 1 2 Next >