An Introduction To Land Law

Gardner and MacKenzie's An Introduction to Land Law has been widely acclaimed by students and teachers for the distinctively informative and stimulating way in which it addresses this challenging subject. Concise and highly readable, it covers the main points of land law found in the syllabuses of law schools in England and Wales. While not intended as a comprehensive textbook, it provides both sufficient detail, and especially the illuminating overview needed, for a real understanding, and many pointers for those seeking more. Most of all, it stands apart from other land law books in the model it offers of critical engagement with the material. As the authors say in their Preface: [W]e aim not just to state the law, but to paint its portrait, or tell its story, or something of that kind. So we set out to offer a careful, thoughtful, honest and critical (but not unsympathetic) appraisal, from a number of directions, both doctrinal and contextual. Once again, too, we present the portrait or story partly for its own interest, but most of all so as to encourage readers to try something similar for themselves – to reflect on the subject more, and so understand it better, and at the same time deepen their thinking skills in general. As well as updating the book's overall coverage, this new edition features reworked discussions of areas where the law has recently undergone substantial change, and also where the authors' thoughts themselves have developed – including ownership, easements, and rectification of the land register. As one reader of the first edition commented, 'it shone light where none had shone before, and lit a clear path to understanding'.

'Introduction to Land Law' presents a clear and accessible explanation of this often difficult to grasp subject, introducing students to some of the critical issues they must engage with throughout their course.

The Historical Roots of English Land Law. Originally published: London: Oxford University Press, 1927. xxiv, 339 pp. One of the most distinguished historians of English common law, Holdsworth produced this manual to provide students of real property with a concise history of the field. This background was necessary, he argued, because contemporary land law was hard to comprehend apart from its history. "[Holdsworth] has cheerfully carried through the task of giving us an elementary survey of one part of the vast subject in the mastery of which he stands alone. Most writers of manuals have to popularize the results of the labour of others; Professor Holdsworth need pillage few storehouses but his own." --Law Quarterly Review 44: (1928) 105. William S. Holdsworth [1871-1944] was a professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Cambridge from 1903-1966 and became the Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford in 1922. He is well-known for his monumental A History of English Law (1903-1966) and other works, such as Charles Dickens as a Legal Historian (1929) and Some Makers of English Law (1938).

This classic work (formerly entitled An Introduction to the History of Land Law) has been thoroughly revised with some chapters rewritten to bring it completely up to date. It is available for the first time in paperback.