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Soule & Bugbee’s Legal Bibliography (1881-1890)

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This is a guest post by Anne Guha, who was an intern with the Law Library’s Public Services Division this spring and is now working in Public Services.

We recently received a fascinating inquiry from a fellow law librarian through our Ask a Librarian system, and with her permission, would like to share the results with you.  This patron hailed from the George Mason University Law Library in Arlington, Virginia, and she was looking to learn about our collection of Soule & Bugbee’s Legal Bibliography (1881-1883) and its continuing title, Legal Bibliography (1884-1890), which took over starting with issue number 5.  This periodical, published by Boston legal publishers Soule & Bugbee (and later just by Charles C. Soule), was “published and distributed gratuitously at irregular intervals,” mailed out to judges, lawyers, and law students, who were in turn encouraged to pass the issues around to other legal practitioners (“Show this paper to other Lawyers” it declares on several of its covers):

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 4 - Full First Page

The Law Library of Congress is fortunate to have issue numbers 3-11 of this fascinating periodical, which included advertisements for a wide variety of recently released or forthcoming legal publications by various publishers, in addition to a number of other interesting features.  Soule & Bugbee’s printed book notes, descriptions, publication dates, excerpts – and, of course, prices! – for various types of materials, such as legal reference manuals, treatises, books for law students, reporters, “odd reports, “rare old law books, “old civil-law books,” and “special lists of bargains:”

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 3 - Special List of Bargains

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 3 - Odd Reports, etc

The various sales pitches are quite fun and interesting to read.  In issue number 4, they write: “We ask your subscription for the Fourth Edition of Chitty’s (English) Equity Index”, a digest of equity reports, which could be ordered “in sheep or in half calf,” and which “every library needs”: Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 4 - Digest of Equity Reports (Cropped)In number 3 we learn that Green Brice’s Ultra Vires is, “in many respects, the most serviceable book on Corporation Law,” and that Baylies on Sureties and Guarantors is “more satisfactory than any other work on these subjects”:

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 3 - Greens Brices Ultra Vires

Number 4 also contains “Reading for leisure hours,” a “list of publications […] which are intended for the amusement and recreation of lawyers,” including titles such as Browne’s Law and Lawyers in Literature and Heard’s Oddities of the Law. Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 4 - Reading for Leisure Hours

Other issues contain additional notable items.

Several, for example, include illustrations and engravings:

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 9 - Freeman Place Chapel

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 11 - The American and English Encycl of Law

Issue 5 included a loose illustration of Sir Matthew Hale, declaring on page 4: “What is a coif? — Can any reader tell whether the head-gear of Chief Justice Hale, as represented in the engraving accompanying this paper, is a coif or not?” Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 5 - Sir Matthew Hale Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 5 - What is a Coif

This periodical also occasionally printed short articles and features, such as pronunciation tables for names of English and American reporters and legal authors, which, according to issue number 4, “seem to be liable to mispronunciation,” or, in issue 3, an update on “the famous bug case”:

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 4 - Pronunciation of American Names

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 3 - The Bug Case

A few of the issues have advertisements for law schools, such as issue number 8, which places their illustrious names alongside a full-column-length advertisement for Horsford’s Acid Phosphate (“For Dyspepsia, Mental and Physical Exhaustion, Nervousness, Diminished Vitality, etc. […] Beware of Imitations!”):

Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 8 - Law Schools and Horsfords

What spurred our patron’s interest in this publication?  It turns out that this periodical is something of a predecessor to George Mason University Law School’s own law journal, The Green Bag: An Entertaining Journal of Law.  George Mason’s Green Bag was inspired by a legal magazine of the same name, published by Charles C. Soule, which is announced here in issue number 11 of Legal Bibliography: Soule & Bugbee's - Issue No 11 - The Green Bag

In a nod to its forebearer publication, George Mason’s modern Green Bag is planning to publish a scholarly edition of the whole Legal Bibliography series.

Comments (2)

  1. I have never heard of this periodical and I love that is it published at irregular intervals. I especially enjoy the photo of C.C. Soule’s bookstore in a former chapel. I did a search in Hein Online and Soule’s name comes up quite a bit. I would like to learn more about him.

    Reading this post was a real treat on a Monday!

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