The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights, Or, The Lawes Provision for Woemen

Book excerpt: [T. E.]. The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights: Or, The Lawes Provision for Woemen. A Methodicall Collection of Such Statutes and Customes, With the Cases, Opinions, Arguments and Points of Learning in the Law, As Doe Properly Concerne Women. Together with a Compendious Table, Whereby the Chiefe Matters in This Booke Contained, May Be the More Readily Found. London: Printed by the Assignes of John More, 1632. [xiv], 404 pp. Reprint available June 2005 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-525-4. Cloth. $125. * Reprint of the first edition. The first work devoted exclusively to women's law, this incomparable digest of laws in force at the time of the Civil War is also known as The Womens Lawyer. An anonymous work, its preface is signed T.E. Often attributed to Thomas Edgar [fl. 1615-1649], some believe the author was actually Sir John Dodderidge [1555-1628], an important legal figure during the reign of James I. Lord Campbell considers it "a learned work on the subject of marriage" (cited in Sweet & Maxwell). It also treats such diverse topics as age of consent, dower, hermaphrodites, polygamy, wooing, partition, chattels, divorce, descent, seisin, treason, felonies and rape. Sweet & Maxwell, A Legal Bibliography of the British Commonwealth of Nations I:500 (24).