Rare Book Collection

The Law Library’s 14,000-volume collection of rare law books spans the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The majority of these works relate to British and American law, including first or early editions by common law scholars such as Coke, Blackstone, and Bracton. The Library’s Oceans collection includes rare legal texts on the law of nations, admiralty law, and maritime commerce dating back to 1567. A priority of Law Special Collections is to acquire exact duplicate editions of the 369 legal titles in the original University of Virginia Library.

About the Rare Book Collection

The core of our Rare Book Collection is a large portion of the law titles Thomas Jefferson selected for the University of Virginia library when it opened in 1825. Many of the titles in our collection are exact duplicate editions of those selected for the first UVA library, but we do preserve a number of copies that were part of the first library and originally shelved in the Rotunda. Our British collection has grown to include a small number of yearbooks; at least one edition of the most significant nominative reporters; a number of digests, dictionaries, and abridgments; a small number of statutes; and a substantial representation of the major legal treatises. There are first or early editions of the leading scholars of English common law including Glanville, Bracton, Coke, and Blackstone. The collection also includes treatises in early American law, ranging from the major works of such scholars as Kent and Story to regional form books and justice-of-the-peace manuals. There is also a collection of colonial laws and statutory materials for states and territories of the United States. An additional area of focus is admiralty law, law of the sea, and other maritime topics, primarily but not exclusively American and English. Rare books do not circulate and must be read in the rare book room.

Faculty Writing Collection

The library collects and preserves one non-circulating copy of each book or article published by the University of Virginia law faculty. Many of these are located in the Caplin Reading Room on the first floor of the library and are identified in the VIRGO catalog as Location: "Law 1st Floor Reserve Room" with a call number beginning with the letters "VL." If the circulating copy of a faculty publication is unavailable, the archival copy of any non-fragile faculty publication may be checked out from circulation for two hours as a reserve book, not to be removed from the library.

Rare Book Collection

1828 Catalogue

The 1828 Catalogue Law Books Collection is an ongoing effort of Special Collections at the University of Virginia Law Library. For the past forty years, we have been quietly working to amass the 375 law titles included in the Catalogue, an inventory of books in the University of Virginia Library compiled by University librarian William Wertenbaker and published by Gilmer, Davis, & Co. of Charlottesville in 1828. Most of the 8,000 books in the Catalogue were purchases made under the direction of Thomas Jefferson, who in 1824 compiled a list of 6,860 volumes he believed should form the core of the new library. The 375 titles in the law section of the Catalogue reflect Jefferson’s broad familiarity with the law literature of his time and provide insight into the variety of texts that informed Jefferson’s understanding of the role and mechanics of government.

Fire and time destroyed and scattered these foundational texts of the University of Virginia Law Library. Placed in the Rotunda Annex in 1894, some original law books suffered the fate of most of the University of Virginia Library when the Rotunda and Annex burned in 1895. Although students and professors saved many law books from the flames, the poor provenance of surviving texts makes it impossible to bring together the original 375-volume law library. The 1828 Catalogue Law Books Collection is a reconstitution of this library through the assemblage of exact editions of the law books listed in the Catalogue. Fortunately, Wertenbaker noted the edition year of nearly every work in his Catalogue, facilitating efforts to recreate the law portion of the first University of Virginia Library as closely as possible.

The 1828 Catalogue Law Books Collection is part of a larger effort among a variety of institutions to study and celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s lifelong passion for books. In 1999, the Library of Congress began efforts to reassemble its original purchase of Jefferson’s 6,487-volume library at Monticello, which Congress acquired in 1815 to replace the collection burned by the British as part of their occupation of Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812. “Thomas Jefferson’s Library,” currently on display at the Library of Congress, contains both original volumes from the Monticello library and duplicate volumes to replace the Monticello texts destroyed in an 1851 fire at the national Capitol. In 2004, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello began the Thomas Jefferson’s Libraries database, a digital clearinghouse of “books Jefferson owned, desired to own, knew about or recommended to others at different times in his life.” Apart from libraries Jefferson recorded in the form of extant manuscript catalogues, this project aims to reconstruct Jefferson collections that are far less well documented, such as the Shadwell library, which burned in 1770, and the library at Poplar Forest, sold by his grandson in 1873. The database will eventually include the complete contents of Jefferson’s 6,860-volume “wish list” for the University of Virginia Library, preserved in an 1825 document penned for Jefferson by his grandson-in-law, Nicholas Philip Trist.

Explore the 1828 Catalogue