LH&RB Newsletter of the Legal History & Rare Books Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries Volume 18 Number 2 Fall 2012 Research in the area of law book publishing is The George T. Bisel Company and an open field of study. Michael Hoeflich’s Its Publications (1875-2011) Antebellum Law Book Publishing (2010) is a model work on the rise of the law book Joel Fishman, Ph.D. industry in the first half of the nineteenth century. Philadelphia served as a major city for law book publishing throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as reflected in Morris Cohen’s Bibliography of Early American Law (BEAL). In nineteenth-century Philadelphia, the law book industry flourished beginning with Mathew Carey, Patrick Byrne and other Irish emigrants, followed by mid-century with such companies as Kay Brothers, T. & J. W. Johnson, R. H. Small, etc. Beginning in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the George T. Bisel Company serves as the major independent regional law book company still operating today following the mergers of many smaller law book companies and then national law book companies in the 1990s by Thomson, Reed Elsevier, and Wolters-Kluwer. The following is a short summary of the Bisel Company followed by a complete listing of its publications by date. The George T. Bisel Company began in 1876 in Philadelphia by William Felix Bisel. Bisel served th as a private in the 26 Pennsylvania Militia during the Civil War and later read for the bar in Philadelphia (though he is not listed as admitted in Martin’s Bench and Bar of Philadelphia). His brother George, age 16, joined the company in 1877. In the first decades, the store sold law blanks and stationery and only later began to publish law books. This is typical of the early law book publishers in Philadelphia like Mathew Carey or R. H. Small. George served as President of the company until his death on March 28, 1941 at the age of 82. The publication of the company includes both primary and secondary sources. Although it began publishing treatises, in the early twentieth century, it began to publish the then-current edition Continued on page 4 BISEL COMPANY -1- LH&RB IN THIS ISSUE Officers The George T. Bisel Company and Its Publications (1875-2011) Chair Joel Fishman, PhD Page 1 Michael Widener Rare Book Librarian SAA 2012: The Good, the Great, and the Yale Law School Caffeinated Lillian Goldman Library Christine George Page 25 New Haven, CT 06511 203-4324494 Manuscript Ledgers of the Law Firm of [email protected] Colcock and Hutson Brad E. LeMarr Page 26 Vice Chair Jennie C. Meade Rare Book Cataloging Roundtable Director of Special Collections Sabrina Sondhi Page 27 George Washington University Jacob Burns Law Library Program Reviews 716 20th St, N.W. Susan Chinoransky and Kasia Solon Washington, DC 20052 Cristobal Page 28 (202) 994-6857 [email protected] Editor’s Corner Secretary/Treasurer Mark Podvia Page 31 Kasia Solon Cristobal Reference Librarian Book Reviews Tarlton Law Library Joel Fishman, Ph.D. Page 32 The University of Texas School of Law 727 East Dean Keeton Street Member News Austin, TX 78705 Mike Widener Page 53 (512) 232-3801 [email protected] Exhibits Immediate Past Chair Kasia Solon Page 55 Sarah Yates Foreign Law and Rare Book Cataloger Recent Acqustions University of Minnesota School of Law Linda Tesar Page 59 120 Walter Mondale Hall 229 19th Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN 55455 612-615-1898 [email protected] Webmaster Kurt X. Metzmeier Associate Director Louis D. Brandeis School of Law University of Louisville Louisville, KY 40292 502-852-6082 [email protected] -2- Joel Fishman, Ph.D., Book Review Editor Assistant Director for Lawyer Services Duquesne University Center for Legal Information Allegheny County Law Library 921 City-County Building 414 Grant Street Pittsburgh, PA 15219 Phone (412)350-5727/Fax: (412)350-5889 E-mail [email protected] Daniel Blackaby, Legal History Column Editor Reference & Cataloging Librarian Western State University College of Law Library 1111 North State College Blvd. Fullerton, CA 92831 LH&RB Phone (714)738-1000/Fax (714)871-1406 [email protected] LH&RB is published three times each year Michael Widener, Member News Editor by the Legal History & Rare Books Special Rare Book Librarian Interest Section of the American Association Lillian Goldman Library, Yale Law School of Law Libraries. PO Box 208215 New Haven, CT 06520 Phone (203)432-4494/Fax (203)432-7940 Submissions for publication are strongly [email protected] encouraged. We have been known to beg. Correspondence can be sent to the Kasia Solon Cristobal, Exhibits Column Editor appropriate editor at the following address: Reference Librarian Tarlton Law Library, The University of Texas School of Law 727 East Dean Keeton Street Auston, TX 78705 Mark Podvia, Editor-in-Chief Phone (512)232-3801/Fax (512)471-0243 Associate Law Librarian and Archivist [email protected] Dickinson School of Law Library of the Pennsylvania State University Sarah Yates, Sp. Coll. Cat. Column Editor 150 S. College St. Cataloging Librarian Carlisle, PA 17013 University of Minnesota Law Library Phone (717)240-5015/Fax: (717)240-5127 229 19th Ave. S. Email [email protected] Minneapolis, MN 55455 Phone (612)625-1898/(612) Jennie Meade, Articles Editor E-mail [email protected] Director of Special Collections George Washington University Linda Tesar, Acquisitions Column Editor Jacob Burns Law Library Head of Technical Services 716 20th St, N.W. Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary Washington, DC 20052 P.O. Box 8795 Phone (202)994-6857/Fax (202)994-2874 Williamsburg, VA 23187 E-mail [email protected] Phone (757)221-3244/Fax (757)221-3051 E-mail [email protected] Kurt X. Metzmeier, Articles Editor and Webmaster Stewart Plein, Archives Column Editor Associate Director Special Collections Librarian University of Louisville Law Library West Virginia University College of Law Belknap Campus 1 Law School Drive 2301 S. Third Morgantown, WV 26506 Louisville, KY 40292 Phone (304)293-6786/Fax (304)293-6020 Phone (502)852-6082/Fax (502)852-8906 E-mail [email protected] E-mail [email protected] -3- Continued from page 1 BISEL COMPANY of Purdon’s Statutes, commonly known as Stewart’s Purdon’s Digest (1905-1915). Thus, when West acquired the publication in 1930, the new edition was published by three publishers: Bisel, West, and Soney & Sage of Newark, N.J. In 1994, Bisel sold its rights to Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes/Consolidated Statutes Annotated leaving West as the only publisher of the state statutes. Bisel published new editions of the original nominative reports that had not been published in new editions for several decades. Addison’s Reports was a reprint of the original 1800 edition, but Wharton’s Reports & Rawle’s Reports, were updated by current editors. Later, Bisel was the publisher of the official Pennsylvania State Reports for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and then the Pennsylvania Superior Court Reports for the Superior Court. For the trial courts, it published several volumes in Pennsylvania including the Blair County Reports and the last four volumes of the Pennsylvania County Court Reports after T. & J. Johnson Co. folded into Bisel. More recently, it is the publisher of the Pennsylvania Fiduciary Reporter, a statewide collection of cases primarily from the county orphans’ courts. In addition to publishing the statutes and digests in the early part of the century, Bisel’s major contribution to the history of legal literature is the publication of a wide variety of treatises. These titles have been over the decades standard reference sources for the bench and bar. Interestingly, Bisel published a large digest by Ruby Vale that became the predecessor to the West Vale Pennsylvania Digest until the new West’s Pennsylvania Digest 2d was published in the 1970s. It does continue to publish Dunlap-Hanna Pennsylvania Forms with Matthew Bender Company. More recently, Bisel began to publish its Lawsource’s Series, a collection of federal statutes, state statutes and regulations on specific topics as a quick handy guide for the practicing bar. Like other major publishers, Bisel has a mix of looseleaf volumes that are updated annually and annual softcover pamphlets. The following list of publications is drawn from various law library catalogs including the Duquesne University Center for Legal Information/Allegheny County Law Library, Jenkins Law Library, University of Pennsylvania Biddle Law Library, and Temple University Beasley School of Law Library. Most of the earlier titles have appeared in my Bibliography of Pennsylvania Law: Secondary Sources (1993). I have included only complete editions of works and not the annual supplements that may have been published, but are difficult to record. A book like Snitzer, Eminent Domain (1965), for instance, had annual supplements that grew to be larger than the original book (finally a new edition appeared in 2012). Other recent publications have had supplementary pamphlets published rather than a whole new edition annually as a result of the economic conditions existing today. It is my hope that this may be the first in a number of articles discussing the history of the Pennsylvania law book industry. I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Nancy Garner and Kristen McKeaney of Jenkins Law Library for answering some questions concerning their collection. Watts, Frederick. Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania May 1832 - Sept 1840. 3rd ; revised and correct ed. 1879. Rawle, William, Jr, Charles B. Penrose, and Frederick Watts. Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. 3rd , rev. and corr.