The Law of Baron and Femme; Of Parent and Child; Of Guardian and Ward

1816. First Edition of Reeve's Baron and Femme in an Attractive Contemporary Binding Reeve, Tapping [1744-1823]. The Law of Baron and Femme; Of Parent and Child; Of Guardian and Ward; Of Master and Servant; And of the Powers of Courts of Chancery. With an Essay on the Terms, Heir, Heirs, and Heirs of the Body. New Haven: Printed by Oliver Steele, 1816. [iv], 494, [11] pp. Octavo (8-1/2" x 4-3/4"). Contemporary calf, blind fillets to boards, blind fillets and lettering piece to spine. A few minor spots and nicks to boards, two faint early owner signatures ("McMichael" and "W.W. Thomas, 1832") to front board, faint creases and very faint illegible lettering to spine, front joint starting, corners bumped, front hinge starting, rear hinge cracked. Owner inscription (by McMichael) and another early owner inscription in pencil ("Oliver") to front free endpaper, light browning and light foxing to interior, underlining and check marks in an early hand to a few leaves. $500. * First edition. The first American treatise on family law, Reeve's Law of Baron and Femme is a restatement of Blackstone's Commentaries, Book I, Chapters XIV-XVII. It rejects some of the fundamental doctrines of the common law, most notably coverture. As Blackstone puts it, "the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage." Reeve says the opposite. A prescriptive work, Baron and Femme aimed to liberalize the American law of domestic relations, arguing, for example, that married women were permitted to make wills, a point contradicted by the contemporary statute and case law of Connecticut and several other states. Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 4745.