Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Common Law: Holmes' Own Annotations On-Line

There's cause for celebration for fans of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and his great work of legal scholarship, The Common Law, judging from a post by David Warrington, Special Collections Librarian at the Harvard Law School, on the Law Library's Blog. First, the copy of Holmes's Common Law, annotated in his own hand, that has long resided in the Harvard Law School Library is now mounted on-line, in a format that permits one to magnify the justice's often-difficult handwriting. Second copy annotated in Holmes hand has also turned up in Harvard University's Houghton Library. Warrington speculates that the "second copy was kept at [Holmes's] home on Beacon Street or at his Beverley Farms summer house."
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