Ея императорскаго величества Наказь коммиссии о сочинении проекта новаго уложения. Ihrer Kaiserlichen Majestät Instruction für die zu Verfertigung des Entwurfs zu einem neuen Gesetz-Buche verordnete Commission.

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Creator

[Catherine II, Empress of Russia (1729–1796)].

Title

Ея императорскаго величества Наказь коммиссии о сочинении проекта новаго уложения. Ihrer Kaiserlichen Majestät Instruction für die zu Verfertigung des Entwurfs zu einem neuen Gesetz-Buche verordnete Commission.

Publisher

[Moscow]: Kaiserlichen Universitäts-Buchdruckerey,

Date

1767.

Description

This preliminary version of the Nakaz (or Instruction) is interleaved with manuscript contemporary notes, possibly by a delegate to the Assembly that Catherine II convened in 1767 to discuss her draft law code. It is in a sumptuous full red morocco gold-tooled binding (probably of Baltic origin). The ex-libris initials on the title page await identification.

Among the most important law books of the eighteenth century, the Nakaz was composed by Catherine herself, with advice from Voltaire, and influenced by the writings of Montesquieu and other Enlightenment thinkers; printed in numerous editions and languages, the text was disseminated throughout Europe and earned for Catherine the title “the Great.” My very first bibliophilic article was devoted to the Nakaz, published in The American Book Collector (1966) when I was still a law student. I have since published a collected edition of all the major language texts with a substantial scholarly apparatus and bibliography. See W. E. Butler and V. A. Tomsinov (eds.), The Nakaz of Catherine the Great: Collected Texts (2010).

Source

William E. Butler