F. W. Maitland – författare

Noted as one of the ablest and exacting historians of his generation, this selection of historical essays by F. W. Maitland is designed to render more accessible those shorter writings of Maitland's which have the greatest intrinsic value for students of history. While best illustrating his distinctive qualities, it thus serves to stimulate a taste for his greater works. Except for Essay VII, Maitland's notes are given in full, with only slight corrections made necessary by the reclassification of historical records or the detection of some small error of fact.

Frederick William Maitland (1850-1906) is generally regarded as the modern father of English legal history. In this volume, which was originally published in 1898, Maitland discusses the development of English towns, and the concurrent transition from rural to urban habits which occurred amongst the townspeople. The text was produced as the companion volume to The Ford Lectures, which were given by Maitland during 1897. Consummately researched, it is distinguished by the thorough and sensitive use of primary sources which is characteristic of Maitland's work, a sensitivity that is combined with a lively and engaging written style. This is a fascinating book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in legal history and the process of urbanisation.

As the Downing Professor of the Laws of England, F. W. Maitland lectured on equity at Cambridge for 18 years, ending in 1906. The lectures were first published in 1909 under the editorship of A. H. Chaytor and W. J. Whittaker. They were reprinted seven times before being published in 1936 in a second edition edited by J. Brunyate, who added some notes to Maitland's lectures. This edition is replicated here. Equity is an important aspect of English law. Its rules grew up to supplement Common Law and largely concern such matters as wills and trusts.

'Why still read it? Why should scholars consult it and undergraduates study it? The plan answer is that still after ninety years remains the greatest single book on English medieval history': thus J. C. Holt in his foreword to this new impression of one of the classic historical texts in any language. In three extended essays Maitland exploits the information in Domesday to analyse and reconstruct the society, law, government, economy and even something of the mental and imaginative world of early medieval England. Essay I examines the nature of English society in 1066 and how, by 1086, this had changed. The second essay explores pre-Conquest England, stretching back through the Anglo-Saxon law codes and land-books to the English settlement, its social structure and administrative geography. Essay III uses an exhaustive discussion of the hide (that 'dreary old question') to look again at methods of assessment and measurement, and their relationship to the wealth and resources of England; in this Maitland displays, in addition to his customary lucidity, subtlety and enormous powers of historical insight, very considerable statistical competence, of an order hitherto foreign to English historical writing. In his foreword Professor Holt looks afresh at this monument of medieval scholarship, assessing its place both within the wider context of historical study, and also, more specifically, its continued contribution to that debate on the nature of Domesday Book with which scholars have been preoccupied for nearly one hundred years. That Maitland's hypotheses and conclusions should still be central to such a debate is not the least remarkable feature of this extraordinary book.

The essays collected in State, Trust and Corporation contain the reflections of England's greatest legal historian on the legal, historical and philosophical origins of the idea of the state. All written in the first years of the twentieth century, Maitland's essays are classics both of historical writing and of political theory. They contain a series of profound insights into the way the character of the state has been shaped by the non-political associations that exist alongside it, and their themes are of continuing relevance today. This is the first new edition of these essays for sixty years, and the first of any kind to contain full translations, glossary and expository introduction. It has been designed to make Maitland's writings fully accessible to the non-specialist, and to make available to anyone interested in the idea of the state some of the most important modern writings in English on that subject.

The essays collected in State, Trust and Corporation contain the reflections of England's greatest legal historian on the legal, historical and philosophical origins of the idea of the state. All written in the first years of the twentieth century, Maitland's essays are classics both of historical writing and of political theory. They contain a series of profound insights into the way the character of the state has been shaped by the non-political associations that exist alongside it, and their themes are of continuing relevance today. This is the first new edition of these essays for sixty years, and the first of any kind to contain full translations, glossary and expository introduction. It has been designed to make Maitland's writings fully accessible to the non-specialist, and to make available to anyone interested in the idea of the state some of the most important modern writings in English on that subject.

Originally published in 1920 as part of a series of handbooks for teachers, this book of advice to history teachers is still full of practical information on the use of historical sources and possible classroom exercises designed to engage children with the study of the past. This book will be useful to anyone with an interest in the history of education, historical education in particular.