Charles Dickens As a Legal Historian

Reprint of first and sole edition. Originally published: New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929. 157 pp. * "The distinguished English historian, Professor Holdsworth, has contrived even during his moments of recreation to render us his debtors. No two books outside the bounds of technical law are more worth reading for law students than Pickwick Papers and Bleak House. Even a trained trial lawyer however, is puzzled by some of the legal points brought up by Dickens, because they have fortunately passed forever out of the realm of living law. Professor Holdsworth has performed a valuable service to lawyers and laymen alike in explaining these obscurities. And he has done much more than this. He has increased our admiration for the genius of Dickens by proving his great merit as a legal historian.": Zechariah Chafee, Jr. Harvard Law Review 42:286-8.