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17 Ill. L. R. 26 (1922-1923)
List of One Hundred Legal Novels

handle is hein.journals/illlr17 and id is 36 raw text is: A LIST OF ONE HUNDRED LEGAL NOVELS'
By JOHN H. WIGmoRE
1. And what, pray, is a 'legal' novel? For there have surely
not been many illegal novels. The illegalities in which the great
novelists have figured have commonly been not suits for libels
committed by them, but gallant struggles (like those of Charles
Reade) to protect their copyrights against pirates, or to vindicate
themselves (like poor Cooper) against envenomed reviewers.
A 'legal' novel, as here meant, will be simply a novel in which
a lawyer, most of all, ought to be interested, because the principles
or the profession of the law form a main part of the author's theme.
As for any definition or further subdividing of the 'legal'
novel, it is perhaps unprofitable and certainly difficult, being decidedly
open to difference of taste and opinion. Nevertheless, for those
who care to pick and choose, there may be noted, in the rough,
four kinds:
(A)   Novels in which some trial scene is described-perhaps
including a skilful cross-examination;
(B) Novels in which the typical traits of a lawyer or judge,
or the ways of professional life, are portrayed;
(C) Novels in which the methods of law in the prosecution
and punishment of crime are delineated; and
(D) Novels in which some point of law, affecting the rights
or the conduct of the personages, enters into the plot.
In the following list these sorts are indicated by the letters
A, B, C, D. But let it be understood that such an indication is
suggestive only; for the class of a particular novel is often a matter
for difference of opinion. Moreover, the list will include only those
in which one of these circumstances is a more or less prominent
feature.
2. But the list need not try to include all such works of
fiction-good, bad, or indifferent. Where shall the line be drawn?
On the one hand, it must not exclude all but the works of the great
masters, from Fielding and Dickens to Stevenson and Howells.
Yet it may properly be confined to what may be called literature, i. e.,
1. This article is a corrected reprint of an article originally appearing
in this REVIEW in April, 1908 (vol. II, p. 574). Notice is hereby given that
neither this article nor the list of novels which follow may be reprinted in
any other periodical without permission of ILLINOis LAW REVIEW.

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