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Illustrated law books may seem like an oxymoron. After all, law is conceptual, analytic, and so very wordy! Yet for the past decade, over a thousand illustrated law books have been assembled in the Yale Law Library -- spanning eight centuries and four continents.
Law's Picture Books began as a major exhibition of that collection at the Grolier Club (9/13 to 11/18/17) in New York City, curated by Rare Book Librarian Michael Widener and legal historian Mark S. Weiner. In challenging the stereotype of legal literature as a dreary expanse of dry text, this book will surprise and delight both bibliophiles and members of the legal community.
This handsome full-color book is enhanced by the essays Collecting Yale Law Library's Picture Books, (Michael Widener), Reflections on an Exhibition, (Mark S. Weiner), Ars Memoria in Early Law: Looking Beneath the Picture, (Jolande E. Goldberg, Law Library of Congress), and Law's Picture Books and the History of Book Illustration, (Erin C. Blake, Folger Shakespeare Library).
