Giles Jacob

Giles Jacob (1686 – 8 May 1744) was a British legal writer whose works include a well-received law dictionary that became the most popular and widespread law dictionary in the newly independent United States. Jacob was the leading legal writer of his era, according to the Yale Law Library.

The literary works of Giles Jacob did not fare as well as his legal ones, and he feuded with the poet Alexander Pope both publicly and in literary form. Pope named Jacob as one of the dunces in his 1728 Dunciad, referring to Jacob as "the blunderbuss of the law". Jacob is remembered well for his legal writing, though not so much for his poetry and plays. Among eight children, Giles was the only son of Henry and Susannah Jacob. Henry Jacob was a maltster who lived until 1735. Working for Blathwayt, he engaged in litigation and dispensation, probably in manorial courts.

e is generally accurate and faithful, and affords much information to those who have occasion to consult him. It cannot be denied that he possessed very small abilities; but he was fully equal to a task where plodding industry, and not genius, must be deemed the essential qualification.

In the Poetical Register, Jacob criticized the play Three Hours After Marriage (1717), which had been written by John Gay with anonymous assistance from John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope. Jacob wrote that its scenes "trespass[ed] on Female Modesty". The play Three Hours After Marriage was panned by most critics as obscene, and literary historian Thomas Lounsbury has explained that no one criticized the play "without incurring [from Pope] an enmity that never died out". Jacob's most successful non-legal writing was of a similarly practical and descriptive sort.

Personal life Jacob married Jane Dexter in 1733, and they had at least one daughter, also named Jane. He and his family moved to Staines, Middlesex, where he died on 8 May 1744.

Works The Compleat Courtkeeper, or Land-Steward's Assistant, 1713; 8th edit. 1819. The Accomplished Conveyancer, 3 vols., 1714. The Country Gentleman's Vade Mecum, containing an Account of the best Methods to improve Lands, 1717. The Compleat Sportsman, in three parts, 1718. Lex Mercatoria, 1718. Lex Constitutionis, 1719. The Laws of Appeal and Murder, 1719. The Laws of Taxation, 1720. The Land Purchaser's Companion, 1720. Poetical Register, or Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets, 2 vols., 1719–20 The Common Law common-placed, 1726. A New Law Dictionary, 1729, fol., which reached a tenth edition in 1782, reissued with additions by T. Tomlins in 1797, 1809, and 1835. The Compleat Chancery-Practiser, 1730. City Liberties, 1732.