Brown, Archibald, 1841-1916.
Brown's New Law Dictionary : English Law
Biographical information about Middle Temple barrister Archibald Brown is surprisingly scant, even though he wrote and published prolifically through the 1870s-1890s. He wrote on a range of topics, including treatises on the laws of fixtures, enfranchisements and commutations, married women's property law, and Savigny's treatise on obligations. He also edited many works, including those of Edmund H. T. Snell and William Bainbridge.
His law dictionary aims to express the "Institute of the whole Law of England" briefly, but without meagerness or inaccuracy. To keep the volume as slim as possible, Brown had to compress the details of the law as far as possible, exclude everything that was "old and totally disused," and take pains to limit explanation or iteration, providing only proper references. He wrote the work to serve students of the law, for whom, he entreated in his preface, we should feel ever-increasing compassion, as the demands upon them are so burdensome.
The most noticeable difference between this dictionary and several others like it is its table of contents, comprising more than 50 pages of text just after the preface, arranged alphabetically by subject and then by the terms within that subject. This index seems to offer a nearly unprecedented convenience. The work itself offers relatively few references compared to some of its predecessors, but presents its definitions briefly and clearly.
Only one edition of Brown's dictionary was published, although a
reprint appeared in 1988.
Bibliography
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