Early English Law Collection
Harvard Law Library possesses the largest and most comprehensive single collection of early English law in the world.
The core of this collection was acquired in 1913, when the Law School purchased at auction the law library of the English collector George Dunn. Although Dunn studied law and was accepted to the bar, he never practiced as a barrister, preferring to spend his time in study and collecting manuscripts and early printed books. At his death in 1912, over half of his library was comprised of books and manuscripts relating to law, mostly English.
Since 1913 the Law Library has added to the Dunn collection by purchase, exchange, or gift until today the collection contains copies of about eighty-five per cent of extant English law books printed before 1601. Among the Early English materials are a fourteenth century illuminated manuscript of the Magna Carta cum statutis believed to have been commissioned by Phillipa of Hainault for Edward III, on the occasion of their marriage in 1326; a copy of the first printed collection of English statues (1485) and a copy of the first edition of the first English law treatise, Littleton's Tenures (1482).
In 2001, Henry N. Ess, III bequeathed his collection of English law books printed before 1601 to the Law Library. A member of the Harvard Law School Class of 1944, Mr. Ess was the book review editor for Volume 57 (1943-44) of the Harvard Law Review. His interest in collecting law books was sparked by his work as editor. Over the next half-century, he formed his own collection, purchasing books at auction and from booksellers both in England and the United States. In 1978 Ess gave a talk before the New York City Bar Association entitled The Sixteenth Century English Lawyer's Library, basing much of what he wrote upon his own collection. At the time of his death, Ess's collection of pre-1601 imprints numbered over four hundred titles and was the most important collection of early English law in private hands.
Thanks to a matching LDI Access Grant, in early 2003 the Library began a three-year project to catalog the pre-1601 early English collection.