Cornish's Treatise on Purchase Deeds, of Freehold Estates,...
Uncommon Innovative Treatise Dealing With Deeds Cornish, William Floyer [c.1801-1830]. Horsey, George [1819-1899], Editor. Cornish's Treatise on Purchase Deeds, of Freehold Estates, And Incidentally of Leasehold Property, With Precedents and Practical Notes. Philadelphia: T. & J.W. Johnson & Co., 1856. xxiii, [25]-172, 4 pp. Star-paged. Includes four-page publisher catalogue. Octavo (9" x 5-3/4"). Contemporary sheep, blind frames to boards, blind fillets and lettering piece to spine. A few scuffs and stains to boards, some wear to spine ends, joints and corners, hinges just starting at ends. Offsetting to margins of endleaves, light foxing to a few leaves. Owner annotation to front pastedown, his signature to facing free endpaper and head of preface, interior otherwise clean. $350. * First and only American edition, based on the second London edition of 1855, to which it is star-paged. "In many respects this is a remarkable work. Originally published in 1828, it was the precursor of the modern forms of conveyancing, in respect to brevity and conciseness. Certainly it is most highly creditable to the sagacity of the author, and demonstrates the soundness of his acquaintance with principles, to find that so little advance has been made ahead of the principles which being then in a miserable minority, he so many years ago advocated, and so little improvement effected in the framework in which he embodied his views. But the book is not only remarkable it is in the highest degree adapted for use. (...) This work having been given to the world at a time when the public was not prepared for innovation, and had not acquired the now reigning tastes for brevity despatch, and economy of time, labour, and expense, attracted but little attention, and has never been as well known as it deserved to be. Mr. Horsey, however, the editor of the new edition, by careful additions and improvements, has brought up the work to the standard of the present day....": Law Magazine: Or Quarterly Review of Jurisprudence 23 (1855) 198. This treatise was also reprinted in The Law Library 90 (May/June 1856). Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 9515.
Price: $350.00
Book number 44763