Tribe's Bankruptcy Bibliography, 1200s to 1800s

More from John Paul Tribe, Kingston Law School, on the history of insolvency. A Definitive Bankruptcy and Related Subject Bibliography: From the Earliest Times to 1899 in Chronological Order begins with sources from the 1200s. Here's the abstract:

Much in the same way that Professor Sir John Baker QC publishes 'Migrations of Legal Manuscripts' in the Journal of Legal History, to notify the readership of that learned journal regarding the details of manuscripts, we thought that it might be of some use to the profession and insolvency scholarship generally if we published within the pages of this journal a copy of our working insolvency history bibliography. Our objective in publishing this bibliography is to shed light on hitherto neglected sources and citations that might provide fertile ground for others researching into the history of our subject.

Needless to say this bibliography is constantly in a state of flux and when we have amassed further relevant sources we will publish a new bibliography for the benefit of the profession. If we have missed anything of significance we would be grateful for any information that might improve the completeness of the work. A further objective in compiling this bibliography has been to aid the acquisition of all relevant material relating to the history of our subject at the Centre for Insolvency Law and Policy's (CILP) research library. This collection has recently been bolstered by PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP who have generously donated a substantial library of materials, including a large number of 19th century practitioners' texts in various editions, as well as nominate law reports. This corpus of materials was in a former guise Professor Graham's working library at the bar.

Within this bibliography we have attempted to include citations relating to insolvency law and related subjects covering: legislation, bills, petitions, readings in the Inns of Court, practitioners texts, and pamphlets. We have not included case law citations, merely reference to the relevant nominate reports wherein the case law itself can be found. We have also included citations to materials that help fill in the background to the relevant period in terms of commercial trade and practice.

In due course an article will be published in the pages of this journal that links practitioners' texts from the 16th century right through to the present edition of Williams & Muir Hunter on Bankruptcy. It is possible to trace the influence of preceding texts and authors on their descendants to such an extent that a continuous line can be drawn through 400 years of insolvency writing. The biographical and substantive contribution of each author will be discussed. In the interim, Professor Graham's entry on Stone can shortly be seen in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition.