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Book Review
| Guy Holborn, Sources of Biographical Information on Past Lawyers, Warwick: British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, 1999. Pp. v + 169. £12.50, paper (ISBN 0-9502081-2-4).
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| This is an extremely useful work that warrants a wider circulation than it will probably receive, especially in the United States. Insofar as I can tell, the only distributor is Hammicks Legal Bookshops in Bristol, and I include their web address for those wishing to order this book (http://www.hammickslegal.co.uk). |
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The author, who is librarian at Lincoln's Inn Library, offers over 500 sources for researching English and Welsh legal biography. While a few Irish sources are included, Scots and colonial sources are not. The work runs the gamut of lawyer professionals and chronologically spans British history. Although the author sets limits on the kinds of works—generally not books or articles relating to particular individuals or firms ("It is not a bibliography of biographies as such" [iii]), he does make exceptions. Sources includes no works published later than the summer of 1998. |
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Holborn's study is, in a sense, twice divided into eleven parts, really chapters, although none is numbered. The reader is initially led through a narrative sequence of nonlegal and legal sources, those relating to barristers, the inns of court, serjeants, inns of chancery, attorneys and solicitors, civilians, scriveners and notaries public, law officers, and the judiciary and personnel of the courts. Each of these topics contains cited sources of which there are 555. The second sequence, similarly structured, comprises these citations or the bibliography. This arrangement works, although it seems cumbersome. What is lacking after the bibliography is an index, which would allow for a quick check of these sources. |
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What should and should not be included in such a compilation is always debatable, and generally it is unbecoming for a reviewer to second-guess the author. Still, why not? Why, for example, do J. H. Baker's Introduction to English Legal History (3rd ed. 1990) and The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes (1986) win inclusion while G. R. Rubin's and David Sugarman's, Law, Economy & Society (1984)—especially with its important Michael Miles essay, "Eminent Practitioners: The New Visage of Country Attorneys"—does not? Holborn would, I suppose, explain Baker as "useful as background." Although Holborn has included Judy Slinn's articles on writing and researching firm histories, he has not, true to his stated criteria, included her History of Freshfields (1984). Yet, firm histories are often sources of information about past lawyers. The same may be said of William Cobb's History of Grays of York (1989) and Vivienne Parrott's several essays on Manchester solicitors. Ph.D. dissertations are missing. For example, Michael Miles's "'Eminent Attorneys': Some Aspects of West Riding Attorneyship, c. 1750–1800" (University of Birmingham, 1982) is informative about Yorkshire attorneys. |
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As I conclude this review, I worry that I have been too severe. This is a very good and helpful resource; nevertheless, I believe that it can be improved. Perhaps it is conceptualized too narrowly. There are, moreover, a number of works relating to legal biography that have appeared since the printing of this work. I suggest that Sources of Biographical Information may already warrant a new edition and some rethinking of what might be included beyond the substance of this first edition. |
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| Albert J. Schmidt
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The George Washington University
Quinnipiac College School of Law |
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