In 1847 John G Marvin's Legal Bibliography of American, English, Irish and Scotch law books, including a few continental works, was published in Philadelphia. This splendid but little-known compilation is an indispensable tool for legal historians as well as anyone interested in the growth of insolvency law and related crossborder issues. Original copies are very rare but fortunately facsimile reprints are now available.
Marvin mainly compiled his informative and entertaining work from the rich resources held at Harvard Law School. Although attempts had been made in several American States to discourage the citation of cases decided in England subsequent to Independence, the demand for this type of material remained as strong as ever. Practitioners eagerly awaited the arrival every Spring and Autumn of ships carrying such cargoes.The appetite for law books on both sides of the Atlantic was almost insatiable and it became quite common for a work published in London to be given a US edition. William Roberts's Voluntary and Fraudulent Conveyances, which appeared in 1801, received a second American edition in 1825.
Marvin had some help from JW Wallace, the librarian at the Law Association of Philadelphia. Already the author of a celebrated work about the principal reporters of cases in the common law world, he subsequently held the position of Reporter to the Supreme Court. In this capacity he followed in the footsteps of Alexander Dallas, HenryWheaton and Richard Peters.
Marvin's format was strikingly modern. In respect of many of the books he mentions he would often include his own comments in addition to those of judges and legal scholars. A typical example of his approach is his caustic dismissal of Basil Montagu's early work on set-o¡ published in 1801 with the words: 'singularly brief and unsatisfactory' . Roberts's book was treated a little more generously: 'though