TAKE NOTE EXHIBIT LABELS - KB & MLP NOVEMBER 2012 site visit by Karen Beck and Mary Person. Anonymous, De termino Michaelis anno primo Eduardi Quarti (Year Book of Edward IV: 1461-1470) London: Richard Tottell, 1572 Rare STC 9776; Beale R228; HOLLIS 9307927 This page is from a volume of twenty “year books” covering the reign of Edward IV. It was published between 1571 and 1572, nearly a century after Edward’s death in 1483. In the upper corner of the first leaf of the text, a former owner recorded the price he paid for the book on “29 Jannarii anno de 1587 regni Eliza. 30”—or 1588 in the modern calendar. Written throughout the volume in the same careful hand are marginal notes and many citations. Perhaps most interestingly, below the colophon at the end of each year book the annotator added, in Latin, the dates on which he read the year books, from 31 January 1587 [i.e. 1588] to 23 May 1588. English year books themselves were a form of note-taking intended to guide lawyers in future court cases. First devised around 1300, year books consisted of notes on points of debate and pleading in court cases. They continued to be produced into the 16th century, after which they were replaced by other kinds of case reports. Year books were first printed in the early 1480s by William Machlinia. Later, the prolific 16th-century London printer Richard Tottell produced over 200 editions of year books, including reprints and compilations. Anthony Fitzherbert, Office et auctoryte des iustyces de peas London: Richard Tottell, 1584 Rare STC 10979; Beale T330; HOLLIS 003973326 This is a copy of an expanded Law French edition of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert’s popular treatise on the duties of justices of the peace. At the top of the title page, its late sixteenth century owner—most likely a man—signed his name. Unfortunately his signature is now indecipherable due to close cropping (possibly when the Law Library had it rebound in 1897). In the sixteenth century, readers often purchased their books as printed sheets and had them bound to their specifications, and it was common practice for legal texts to be interleaved for note-taking. In this case, the former owner had this work partially interleaved and subsequently made lengthy notes on those sheets. His extensive annotations to the text itself include citations to laws, given in regnal years. Additionally, and perhaps most interestingly, small vellum tabs were sewn onto the edges of selected leaves of text and labeled by topic. The irregularity of the linen stitches leads one to believe that these tabs were sewn on by the owner. Many of the tabs are now faded and most are illegible, but they bear witness to this early reader’s efforts to organize and find his way efficiently through the printed text. Richard, Earl of Anglesey, The Trial of the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Anglesey London: 1744 HOLLIS 4021485 As it turned out, Richard earl of Anglesey was neither right nor honorable. The trial was one in a series between the Earl and James Annesley, who claimed to be the legitimate son of the Earl’s older brother, whom Richard had defrauded to secure both title and fortune. Though the trial transcripts were published in London, the legal drama itself took place in Ireland. This trial was about a fight which occurred on September 16, 1743, between the Earl and some of his supporters on one side, and James and some of his friends on the other, but the trial did not take place until the following August, 1744. However, during the previous November of 1743 a series of court actions had upheld the claims of James Annesley. The protracted legal struggle between the Earl and James Annesley attracted the rapt attention of the eighteenth-century English public, and was used by Robert Louis Stevenson as the basis for his novel Kidnapped. The legal saga had all the elements of true drama: a wicked uncle, a deprived orphan forced into exile, and his return to reclaim his rightful name and place. As shown here on page 41, this anonymous reader’s comment in his copy of the published trial transcript leaves no doubt as to his sympathies. Anonymous, Registrum Brevium Great Britain: ca. 1380 HLS MS 65; HOLLIS 5680961 This manuscript contains copies of writs beginning in the reign of Richard II (1377-1399). It is a composite manuscript of 308 folios, in a later binding. Bound in at the front are some vellum leaves containing a detailed table of contents (TOC) for the first 98 folia of the manuscript. The listing groups the folios by numbered gathering; within each gathering there is a consecutive list of some of the marginal lemmata for the content of the page. The numbering of the gatherings appears as a running heading on the gatherings. Not all the lemmata are copied into this list, and some gatherings are given more detailed descriptions of content than others, so the TOC reveals both the content of the first section, and the entries most significant to the compiler. The enumeration of the gatherings is given according to the AngloNorman system in which, for example, folio 98 is given as XX over iiii (4 times 20) plus X (10) plus viii (8). The logical inference is that the TOC was compiled soon after the text which is now the first section of MS. 165 was written. The TOC ends with folium 98v which concludes a gathering, but may not be the end of the original text. Johann Gottlieb Heineccius, Elementa Iuris Civilis Secundum Ordinem Institutionum Leiden, Netherlands: 1751 HOLLIS 12685197 This treatise on Roman law is relatively rare, with about twenty copies of this edition owned by libraries worldwide. This copy, however, is unique. Rather early in its history, this smallish volume (20.5 cm) was bound with larger-format blank sheets (26 cm) interleaved between each page, specifically to facilitate the process of notetaking. About twenty of the leaves feature handwritten notes by an early owner, perhaps Alexander Speirs, a member of the Scottish gentry whose armorial bookplate graces the inside front cover of this book. Heineccius’ text is in Latin; the notes were written in English with a little Latin. In some annotations, the printed text seems to have served as a jumping-off point for the note-taker to ruminate on issues and problems of his day. One long annotation on political systems and theories of punishment (opposite page 341 of the printed text) begins: The severity of punishment is a proof [of] the corruption of manners. To restrain a degenerate people from the commission of enormous crimes the severest punishments are employed. The intended effects are not produced – The mind gradually becomes habituated to them. Horror is diminished and the number of crimes is not lessened. Notetaking and Treatise Making at the Litchfield Law School The Litchfield Law School, founded by Tapping Reeve in Litchfield, Connecticut, was (arguably) the first American law school. It existed from 1782 to 1833 and graduated about 1,000 students who went on to distinguished legal and political careers throughout the young nation. We are fortunate that a large number of Litchfield law student notebooks have survived, including 16 sets owned (and recently digitized) by the Harvard Law School Library. Unlike the messy and disorganized student notebooks familiar to (and written by) many of us, students at Litchfield were expected to copy their professors’ lectures word for word, and then recopy their notes later in the evening into a “fair copy” notebook. Why the formality? The answer is that Litchfield students regarded their notebooks very differently from law students of today. At Litchfield, a major goal of the 14-month program was to enable students to create their own permanent copies of the lectures. At a time when law books were relatively difficult to acquire, Litchfield students’ notes comprised an encyclopedic legal treatise that accompanied them into law practice and served them throughout their careers. For more information: Karen S. Beck, One Step at a Time: The Research Value of Law Student Notebooks, 91 LAW LIBR. J. 29 (1999). Caleb Stark, Lectures of James Gould, 1824-1825. HLS MS 4009; HOLLIS Charles Samuel Stewart, Lectures of Reeve and Gould, 1818. HLS MS 4076; HOLLIS 002119929 These two examples from Litchfield Law School students Caleb Stark and Charles Samuel Stewart exemplify the Litchfield Law School ideal of student notebook as personal legal treatise. These two examples are especially “fair” fair copies. They feature ornate hand-lettered headings, beautiful script, and other indications that these notebooks were used and treasured by their owners long after they had left Litchfield. The Harvard Law School: Law Student Notebooks as Laboratory Manuals The Harvard Law School Library’s Historical & Special Collections unit is replete with books and manuscripts that illustrate the theme of notes and notetaking. Our most unique and comprehensive offering is a collection of manuscript class notes from more than 200 Harvard Law School students taken over the course of some 160 years. These sets of class notes are valuable primary sources for those who want to learn about how people learned, taught, and understood the law. The concept of law as a science took hold in the 19th century, and came to fruition under the leadership of Christopher Columbus Langdell, who served as Dean of the Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895. Before Langdell, law students listened to lectures and copied their notes verbatim into their notebooks, as seen in our Litchfield Law School examples. But Langdell devised a new way of teaching and learning called the case method. Under the guidance of their professors, students were now required to study, dissect, analyze and synthesize the raw materials of the law – legal cases – in order to arrive at their own understanding. Langdell wrote that “[t]he library [was to lawyers and law students] what the laboratory is to the chemist or the physicist and what the museum is to the naturalist.” Fittingly, students’ notebooks now resembled working laboratory notebooks, with crossouts, interleavings, and commentary inserted throughout – a radical change from the neatly copied legal treatises made by students at Litchfield only decades before. Frederic Dodge, Class Notes of Frederic Dodge Harvard Law School: 1868-1869 MSS Class Notes Collection; HOLLIS 2201239 Frederic Dodge (1847-1927) attended the Harvard Law School for one year, from 1868 to 1869. During that year he filled three small, slender notebooks with meticulous notes of his classes. He dated each lecture, noted the professor (including HLS luminaries Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Emory Washburn), and carefully recorded citations to cases mentioned in class. In this respect his notes resemble many of the almost 200 sets of HLS class notes in the Law Library’s Historical & Special Collections. What sets Mr. Dodge’s notes apart is the fact that he was quite the doodler. Included in his notes are doodles of his professors and fellow students, transcripts of bars of popular music, animals, human legs, and a vignette of a young man and woman dancing. Samuel Williston, Class notes of lectures by James Barr Ames on legal history taken at Harvard Law School, 1887-1888. MSS Class Notes Collection; HOLLIS 2288553 Samuel Williston (1861-1963), was a student, and later a faculty member, at the Harvard Law School. While teaching at HLS, he wrote his most famous work, the multivolume treatise The Law of Contracts. But even in his student days, Williston distinguished himself. Here is a volume of notes he took while a student in Dean James Barr Ames’ Legal History class. Taken entirely in shorthand, these notes served as the text from which Ames’ lectures on legal history were printed. S://SCOL/Exhibitions/Classes and Displays/Take Note 2012/Take Note Exhibit Labels.docx