Description
The Selden Society is the only learned society and publisher devoted entirely to English legal history. This includes the history of the law, the development of legal ideas, the legal profession, the courts and legal institutions, individual judges and lawyers, legal literature and records, the languages of the law, legal portraiture and costume; in short, researching the history of everything which is characteristic of our unique English common law and legal system. And because for most of the nation's history, the only continuous records have been legal records, there is in them a wealth of incidental information on every aspect of contemporary life and conditions to be found in no other source.
The Society was founded in 1887 by Frederic William Maitland, with the support of the judges, the Inns of Court, the universities and the legal profession, in England, the United States and other countries. Queen Victoria was its first Patron and it continues to enjoy royal patronage.
Membership: This now stands at nearly 1,700. It includes most of the major law and history libraries in the English-speaking world, as well as many leading national and university libraries in other countries. However most members are individuals: lawyers and historians, including many whose interest is amateur and who support the Society because of their sense of the importance of its work.
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