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2 Ill.L.R. 574 (1907-1908)
List of Legal Novels

handle is hein.journals/illlr2 and id is 476 raw text is: A LIST OF LEGAL NOVELS By JoHN H. WIGMORE.a 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, but gallant struggles (like those of Charles Reade) to protect their copyrights against pirates, or to vindicate them- selves (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. 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 detection, pursuit 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 differ- ence of opinion. Moreover, the list will include only those in which one of these circumstancs is a more or less prominent feature. But the list need not try to catologue all such works of fiction-good, bad, or indifferent. Where shall the line be drawn? On the one hand, it must not purport to include merely 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., novels in which character is delineated by a writer of whom style may be predicated. A few novels, indeed, must be included to which many would not concede these quali- ties-for example, Mr. Meeson's Will; and a few must be ex- aprofessor of Law in Northwestern University. 574

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