To a reviewer who learned his sales law from the First Edition (1957) of this widely acclaimed book, there is something comforting in the appearance of the Eighth Edition. In the case of some other standard works, unkind reviewers have detected an “intellectual hardening of the arteries”. Not so this one, which L.C.B. Gower introduced in his First Edition Foreword (dropped in 1985) as “an up-to-date narrative text-book of modest dimensions on the Law of Sale of Goods”.

It is instructive to trace its development over its eight editions, spanning 33 years. At the outset, the text was a slim 196 pages with cited authorities deliberately sparse (Tables of Statutes 3½ pp.; and Cases 6½ pp.). The format (26 chapters in six Parts) deliberately deviated from the then traditional section-by-section commentary: if anything, it went too much the other way, e.g., artificially separating the duty to give delivery (Chap. 10) from the duty to accept delivery (Chap. 16). However, this new approach did concentrate on basic sales law, shorn of most contract law (even the Chap. 4 on Mistake disappeared after the First Edition). In all this, the work seemed to reflect the brave new post-war world: a treatment which eschewed the routine, emphasized an academic approach, concentrated on fundamental concepts, deliberately sought what the author termed the “dark corners of the law” and did not hesitate to criticize what he considered unsatisfactory rules. Altogether, a very Oxford (perhaps Roman law?) approach.

Hardly had we got used to that format, than Professor Atiyah began to reflect (your reviewer would suggest accurately) the changes in academic legal approach started in the 1960s. First, the author began to move from a theoretical, generalized, approach towards putting the law in context. In the Second Edition (1963), he introduced new Parts on Export Sales (still substantially with us) and Hire-Purchase (where he later gave up the unequal battle). Second, he succumbed to the (regrettable?) modern mania for requiring students to assimilate at undergraduate level an ever-increasing amount of detail: this is most obviously seen in the burgeoning Table of Cases (6½ pp. in the First Edition to 16 pp. in the Eighth); but the author himself recognized (especially in the Prefaces to the Third and Fifth Editions) the rapidly increasing part played in the development of this (and so much other law) by ever-more detailed statutory treatment (will we never start to trust our judges again with more generalized statutes?).

The present Edition is described by its publisher as “a full and detailed account of the English law of the sale of goods”. It contains a text of 554 pages (a 280% increase over the First Edition) which remains critical and questioning. The author (again) reports that developments “have required a great deal of addition, alteration and re-writing”. Major additions this time include detailed treatment of the Law Commission’s Report Sale and Supply of Goods (Law Com. 160) and strict product liability (Part 1 of the Consumer Protection Act 1987). Yet the CPA treatment includes little on misleading pricing (p. 271) and nothing on Consumer Safety (Part 2 of the CPA). But this is simply to point up a dilemma caused by developments in this field: even if the fashionable context approach (not really adopted by the author despite his considerable knowledge in this field) is restricted to legal context, how