Blackstone Exhibition

This blog noted the important Blackstone Exhibition at Yale earlier his year. See https://www.elhblog.law.ed.ac.uk/2015/03/16/blackstone-exhibition. Your blogger is delighted to report that it will soon be able to be viewed in London, at the Middle Temple Library from September to November, after which it will be on display at the Sir John Salmond Law Library at the University of Adelaide from December 2015 to January 2016, reflecting all the recent important work by Wilf Prest. Given that Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) was a member of Middle Temple (admitted 20 November 1741, called to the Bar 28 November 1746 and made a Bencher on 1 May 1761), this is particularly significant.

The exhibition will feature over 40 items from Yale’s Law Library collection, depicting the origins of the Commentaries, its publishing success and its impact on the common law system and more broadly on English and American society. The items include a volume annotated by one of Blackstone’s students, a legal treatise with Blackstone’s marginalia, the first English editions of the Commentaries, early Irish and American pirated editions, abridgments, teaching aids, student manuscripts, critiques, translations (into French, German, Italian, and Chinese), and a 1963 liquor advertisement.

It was tempting to headline the blog entry “Blackstone comes home”; but he is a lawyer for all the world, as at home in New Haven as in Adelaide or London.

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