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It’s an honor to help celebrate Professor Oldham’s long and fruitful career. My comments will focus, naturally, on the importance of his research. But I should also note his well-deserved reputation for generosity as a scholar. I first experienced his kindness when I was a graduate student, emailing him out of the blue to ask…

In 2020, James Oldham, the St. Thomas More Professor of Law and Legal History at the Georgetown University Law Center, took emeritus status after fifty years on the faculty.  Professor Oldham’s career as a legal historian commenced when, curious about the continued presence of Lord Mansfield in Contract casebooks, he devoted a sabbatical to locating…

The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1992) English Common Law in the Age of Mansfield (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) 1. The Jury Trial by Jury: The Seventh Amendment and Anglo-American Special Juries (New York University Press, 2006) The Varied Life of…

In 1963 David Ogilvy published the iconic Confessions of an Advertising Man, described in the forward as “a slender but juicy book.”  Confessions included “commandments” or simple rules on how to get and keep clients, build “great campaigns,” and write “potent copy.”  After offering such profitable advice, Ogilvy ended the book on a very hesitant…

Anat Rosenberg’s The Rise of Mass Advertising is a multi-dimensional, multi-media exhibition. There is an overarching narrative, complete with a number of side plots; there are case studies, often with their own stand-alone lessons; there are illustrations, some lush and colorful, others in small type; there are poems, anecdotes, even jokes, complete with descriptions of…

The first thing to say about The Rise of Mass Advertising is also the first thing that will strike any reader, of whatever kind – whether someone who, like me and the rest of us speaking today, has been studying every page, or whether someone who (let’s hope) may pick it up in a bookstore,…

Once upon a time there was a burgeoning field called ‘Victorian studies’.  Its roots can be found in the 1950s, it flourished in the 1960s and ‘70s, but since then it has withered.  Given how tight disciplinary constraints can be, the emergence of such an interdisciplinary field usually betokens some powerful new motivations.  In this…

This symposium gathers scholars whose expertise and creativity in legal, cultural, British, and consumer history has been indispensable for my work, who all generously invite further expansion on the methods and findings of The Rise of Mass Advertising. To do some justice to their comments, a very quick recap: the book deploys a multidisciplinary methodology,…