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Odgers on Libel and Slander

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 21, 2019
Entity authorityQ7077767 ↗
Source-derived summary

A Digest of the Law of Libel and Slander, also known as Odgers on Libel and Slander and Odgers on Libel, is a book on the law of defamation by William Blake Odgers.

According to the review of the third edition of this book in volume 16 of Law Quarterly Review, published in 1900, the Daily News called it "the best modern book on the law of libel", the Law Times called it "the most scientific of all our law books" and said that "in its new dress" it was "secure of an appreciative professional welcome", and the Law Journal said that "the general opinion of the profession" had "always accorded a high place to" this "learned work" and that the new edition could not "but enhance that opinion".

In 1907, Ernest Arthur Jelf called it "the most erudite work" on the subject of criminal libel, and said that it had "taken a secure place as the leading work" on the subjects of libel and slander.

In the humorous poem "The Hundred Best Books", Mostyn T. Piggott put this book third after the Bible and the Koran, though possibly because "Libel" rhymes with "Bible."

References

Odgers, W B. A Digest of the Law of Libel and Slander: with the Evidence, Procedure, Practice and Precedents of Pleadings, both in Civil and Criminal Cases. Third Edition. 1896.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Odgers on Libel and Slander” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Odgers, Libel and Slander, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1900, 1907, 1896—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Odgers, Libel and Slander is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

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Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2019. The linked authority identifier is Q7077767. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1907 and 1896.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Odgers on Libel and Slander” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.