# Is "Commentaries on the Laws of England" by William Blackstone a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1765) is identified by: Four quarto volumes (about 250 x 194 mm), Oxford: printed at the Clarendon Press, each volume dated to its own year of first publication: vol. Oxford is the true first - Blackstone wrote in English and the Clarendon Press printed it; there is no competing foreign or original-language edition, and the census claim of an Oxford Clarendon 1765-69 four-volume first is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Four quarto volumes (about 250 x 194 mm), Oxford: printed at the Clarendon Press, each volume dated to its own year of first publication: vol
- I 1765, vol
- II 1766, vol
- III 1768, vol
- Because the volumes came out over five years and early volumes were reprinted while later ones were still being written, the single most important point is that every volume must bear its own first-edition date with no edition statement - vol
- II is the usual substitution, and sets circulate with a second-edition vol
- Publisher imprint reads Clarendon Press, Oxford

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Blackstone |
| Publisher | Clarendon Press, Oxford |
| Year | 1765 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Four quarto volumes (about 250 x 194 mm), Oxford: printed at the Clarendon Press, each volume dated to its own year of first publication… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Four quarto volumes (about 250 x 194 mm), Oxford: printed at the Clarendon Press, each volume dated to its own year of first publication: vol. I 1765, vol. II 1766, vol. III 1768, vol. IV 1769. Because the volumes came out over five years and early volumes were reprinted while later ones were still being written, the single most important point is that every volume must bear its own first-edition date with no edition statement - vol. II is the usual substitution, and sets circulate with a second-edition vol. II of 1767 in an otherwise first-edition set. Collation of the first edition: [4], iii, [7], 4-473, [1], viii; [8], 520, xix, [1]; [8], 455, [1], xxvii, [1]; [8], 436, vii, [41]. Volume II must contain the engraved "Table of Consanguinity" and the folding "Table of Descendants." An eight-page "Supplement to the First Edition" is bound at the end of volume I in some copies only and is frequently absent - auction catalogues note its absence explicitly rather than treating it as universal, so it is a desirability point and not a test of the first edition. References: PMM 212; Rothschild 407; Goldsmiths' 10062; ESTC T57753.

## Is this the true first?
Oxford is the true first - Blackstone wrote in English and the Clarendon Press printed it; there is no competing foreign or original-language edition, and the census claim of an Oxford Clarendon 1765-69 four-volume first is confirmed. The first American edition is a separate Americana point, also confirmed: Philadelphia: printed by Robert Bell, 1771-1772, four volumes octavo, reprinted line for line from the fourth Oxford edition of 1770, published by subscription. Bell's set carries a twenty-two-page list of subscribers preceding the title of vol. IV, naming individuals, libraries and booksellers - among them John Adams, John Dickinson, James Wilson, John Jay, and Thomas Marshall, who subscribed for his son John Marshall. Bell also issued a fifth volume unique to his edition, "An Interesting Appendix to Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries," and vol. I contains his prospectus addressed "To the American World."

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue exists for an eighteenth-century quarto. Reprint tells are edition statement, format and imprint: the first is quarto from the Clarendon Press with no edition statement, while the numerous later Oxford editions state their edition on the title. The heaviest reprint traffic is in the American octavos - Bell's Philadelphia 1771-72 and the nineteenth-century American editions with Christian's, Chitty's, Sharswood's or Cooley's notes, all of which are annotated editions rather than states of the first. The University of Chicago Press facsimile of the first edition is a modern reprint and states so.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Commentaries on the Laws of England* by William Blackstone a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.