Sir James Fitzjames Stephen: A Selected Edition

Thanks to the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Editorial Institute is home to a major edition of a Victorian writer who has never been substantially edited until now. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen was a judge, a codifier, and historian of the law, and a prolific essayist and reviewer. His short General View of the Criminal Law of England presented the first textbook account of its subject, and his three-volume History of the Criminal Law of England its first comprehensive history, while his polemical Liberty, Equality, Fraternity remains of great interest as the most effective contemporary attack on J. S. Mill’s arguments in On Liberty. In his essays he wrote with remarkable authority on such matters as slavery, capital punishment, and criminal responsibility, but also on contemporary French and English fiction, church and state, history, liberalism, India, and America.

The eleven volumes of the Selected Edition, which for the first time brings together Stephen’s major writings and important essays and journalism in authoritative texts with scholarly annotation, will involve scholars worldwide as well as enabling student participation in the research. It will be published by Oxford University Press.

The edition is being overseen by Christopher Ricks and, externally, by Frances Whistler as its Directors of Publication. The following scholars are on its Advisory Board:

Rosemary Ashton (University College London)
Stefan Collini (Cambridge University)
Bryan A. Garner (editor-in-chief of Black’s Law Dictionary)
Tony Honoré (Oxford University)
H. J. Jackson (University of Toronto)
Robert Morrison (Queen’s University, Ontario)
Lisa Rodensky (Wellesley College)
David Seipp (Boston University; Board of the American Society for Legal History)
A. W. Brian Simpson (University of Michigan)
Quentin Skinner (Cambridge University

The Volumes

A General View of the Criminal Law of England (1863, revised 1890)
Editor: K. J. M. Smith, Cardiff University, author of Stephen: Portrait of a Victorian Rationalist (1988)

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873, revised 1874)
Editor: Roger Kimball, Managing Editor of The New Criterion and editor of Walter Bagehot: Physics and Politics (Ivan R. Dee, 2000)

A History of the Criminal Law of England (1883), three volumes
Editor: Jula Hughes, Faculty of Law, University of New Brunswick

The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey (1885)
Editor: Lisa Rodensky, Wellesley College, author of The Crime in Mind (Oxford University Press, 2003)

The Life of Sir Fitzjames Stephen (1895), by his brother Leslie Stephen
Introduction: Hermione Lee, Oxford University
Editor: Christopher Tolley, Winchester College

Essay Volumes

On the Novel and Journalism
Editor: Christopher Ricks

On Justice and Jurisprudence
Editors: Michael Lobban, Queen Mary College, University of London; and Paul Mitchell, Kings College London

On Society, Religion, and Politics
Editor: Thomas E. Schneider, Boston University
Advisory Editor: Alan Ryan, Oxford University, co-editor of The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought (1987)