A Compendious and Comprehensive Law Dictionary [1816]

With a New Introduction by Bryan A. Garner

One of several English dictionaries published in the early nineteenth century, Williams's stands out for three reasons. Unlike its predecessors and, presumably, its competitors, this dictionary was designed as a practical everyday reference work. It has a smaller physical size, more entries and, for many of these, shorter definitions.

This dictionary marks an important stage toward the evolution of the modern law dictionary: it is half dictionary, half encyclopedia. (...) Williams may have been ahead of his time in producing a handy quarto edition of a law dictionary. Apart from various editions of Termes de la Ley, huge folios, such as those by Jacob and Cunningham, seem to have been the order of the day. It wasn't until precisely a century after Williams - with the publication of James A. Ballentine's Law Dictionary - that short, small law dictionaries gained popularity. In some sense, Williams's work might be considered a predecessor of today's pocket law dictionaries.

Bryan A. Garner

From the Introduction to this Edition

Thomas Walter Williams [1763-1833] was a barrister of the Inner Temple. He didn't have much success as a pleader, so he established himself, with considerable success, as a legal writer. In addition to his dictionary, he wrote manuals for justices of the peace, compiled abridgments and digests and edited an edition of William Sheppard's Precedent of Precedents.

Unpaginated [1022] pp.

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