Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society

Maine, Henry Sumner, Sir, 1822-1888Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.1
Word count
594K words
Chapters
60

Tags

English Originals World HistoryLaw Institutional OriginsHistorical ReappraisalAncient SocietyLegal EvolutionHumanistic CareIntellectual EnlightenmentSocial ContractAcademic MonographComparative LawCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society by MaineAuthor: Maine, Henry Sumner, Sir, 1822-1888,Language: English, Class: K: Law in general, Comparative and uniform law, Jurisprudence, Release Date: Oct 7, 2007

Editor's review

This is the Project Gutenberg electronic edition of Maine's Ancient Law, in English, a classic text at the intersection of legal studies and early social history. Its value lies not in ready-made conclusions but in a way of understanding legal evolution through early social customs and ties of family and status. The book discusses the connection between ancient law and the history of early society and is suitable as a primary text in comparative law, legal history and social theory. The electronic edition is easy to search and excerpt, but it also means readers must build their own background framework. You need not read every word; first grasp the main thread of how law grows out of custom and status, then return to particular chapters. For Chinese readers the terminology and nineteenth-century argumentative style of the English original may be an obstacle; it is advisable to use a reliable introduction to legal history or a translation alongside, and to treat it as a text for training historical and comparative thinking rather than an introductory popular law book.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read introductory secondary literature first to understand Maine's time and concerns, then enter the original.
  2. Take chapter notes along the thread of custom, status and law, without giving equal effort to every part.
  3. For long sentences, grasp the main structure first, mark key terms, look them up together, then reread.
  4. Read two or three core chapters closely and skim the rest to grasp the structure.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? According to the information, this is an English electronic edition published by Project Gutenberg, in English. Chinese readers need some English reading ability, or should use a translation and introduction alongside.
Can I read this book without a legal background? You can try, but it is advisable first to acquire some introductory knowledge of legal history and comparative law. The argument has a nineteenth-century academic style, and reading it cold can be bewildering; an introduction or course explanation will make it smoother.
What reading approach suits the electronic edition? The electronic edition is convenient for full-text searching and excerpting keywords, and suits thematic reading: locate the core concepts first, then reread the relevant passages around them, rather than reading linearly from the first page to the last.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Maine, Henry Sumner, Sir, 1822-1888 Author · British · 1822–1888

Sir Henry Sumner Maine (1822–1888) was a British jurist and legal historian, best known for Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society. In that work he examined the evolution of legal institutions within the context of early social history, tracing the shift from status to contract—a line of inquiry that proved widely influential and is regarded as a foundational contribution to comparative jurisprudence and legal history. Maine's writing is distinguished by historical comparison, seeking the origins of modern legal ideas in ancient customs and institutions, and his concerns span law, history, and social theory. One of his works is held in this collection, namely Ancient Law. Available sources on the details of his life are limited, so they are not elaborated here.