Frederic William Maitland – författare

Frederic William Maitland: Selections from His Writings is a curated collection of the works of one of England’s most distinguished legal historians. This volume offers a comprehensive introduction to Maitland’s contributions to the field of English legal history, focusing on his meticulous approach to understanding medieval law and his ability to analyze historical texts with precision and critical insight. His work, marked by a deep commitment to historical context and an aversion to anachronism, challenges readers to view the past through the lens of its own time rather than projecting modern perspectives onto historical events. The book highlights Maitland’s capacity for making complex legal concepts both accessible and engaging, demonstrating his brilliance as a historian who could breathe life into even the driest of legal matters.The selections in this volume not only showcase Maitland’s scholarly rigor but also reflect his unique ability to connect the details of legal history to broader cultural and institutional contexts. His profound impact on the study of English law is evident in his careful editing of primary sources and his collaborative work with fellow historians, such as Frederick Pollock. Throughout the collection, Maitland’s writing remains a vital resource for students and scholars alike, illustrating his unwavering dedication to uncovering historical truth. His approach to history, emphasizing critical thinking and an appreciation for historical nuance, continues to inspire generations of legal historians and intellectuals. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of English law and its evolution, as well as the methods that define historical scholarship.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1960.

Frederic William Maitland: Selections from His Writings is a curated collection of the works of one of England’s most distinguished legal historians. This volume offers a comprehensive introduction to Maitland’s contributions to the field of English legal history, focusing on his meticulous approach to understanding medieval law and his ability to analyze historical texts with precision and critical insight. His work, marked by a deep commitment to historical context and an aversion to anachronism, challenges readers to view the past through the lens of its own time rather than projecting modern perspectives onto historical events. The book highlights Maitland’s capacity for making complex legal concepts both accessible and engaging, demonstrating his brilliance as a historian who could breathe life into even the driest of legal matters.The selections in this volume not only showcase Maitland’s scholarly rigor but also reflect his unique ability to connect the details of legal history to broader cultural and institutional contexts. His profound impact on the study of English law is evident in his careful editing of primary sources and his collaborative work with fellow historians, such as Frederick Pollock. Throughout the collection, Maitland’s writing remains a vital resource for students and scholars alike, illustrating his unwavering dedication to uncovering historical truth. His approach to history, emphasizing critical thinking and an appreciation for historical nuance, continues to inspire generations of legal historians and intellectuals. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of English law and its evolution, as well as the methods that define historical scholarship.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1960.

'Constitutional history should, to my mind, be a history not of parties but of institutions, not of struggles but of results ...' F. W. Maitland's remarkable course of lectures provides the basic framework of English constitutional history in a brief, but original, scholarly and very readable form. His method is to take five crucial periods and to present in each a panoramic view of the processes of law and government; his attention is always fixed on the constitution as a growing fabric, as something devised and employed by live human beings. And in this work, as in all he subsequently wrote, Maitland shows a rare combination of high speculative power with exact knowledge of detail.

The forms of action are a part of the structure upon which rests the whole common law of England and, though we may have buried them, they still, as Maitland says, rule us from their graves. The following extract is taken from the editors' preface: 'The evasion of the burden of archaic procedure and of such barbaric tests of truth as battle, ordeal and wager of law, by the development of new forms and new law out of criminal or quasi criminal procedure and the inquest of neighbour-witnesses has never been described with this truth and clearness. He makes plain a great chapter of legal history which the learners and even the lawyers of today have almost abandoned in despair. The text of the chief writs is given after the lectures ...'

Although this book was envisaged as a joint venture and bears the name of both Pollock and Maitland, it is substantially the work of Maitland. It was recognised at once as a masterpiece and has since been accepted as one of the great histories in the English language. In Maitland's lifetime Acton pronounced him the ablest historian in England. Plucknett said that 'everything he wrote exercises a deep fascination and a personal attraction'. To Sir Maurice Powicke he was 'one of the immortals'. Lord Annan, in the preface to his Leslie Stephen, called him 'perhaps the greatest of all professional historians'. To read The History of English Law, even many years after Maitland's death, is to feel at once the touch of a master. That touch could only be weakened by editing, so the present issue is a reprint of the second edition but with an introductory essay and a select bibliography by S. F. C. Milsom, Professor of Legal History in the University of London.