The subject of this book is Serjeant Talfourd's back-bench attempt to reform the law of copyright, an attempt which eventually produced the Copyright Act of 1842. The idea of reform is potent in the history of England in the nineteenth century. It would be impossible to write a general history of the period without giving an account of the major constitutional reforms concerned with popular representation, which eventually transformed parliament. Yet other contemporary legislative reforms are arguably as striking, both in terms of their volume, and in terms of the changes which resulted. The many attempts to improve the law and its mechanisms make this period a significant one for legal history. In the decade following the 1832 Reform Act, approaches to government in the widest sense were re-examined and transformed. This process had protean qualities: striking though the direction and velocity of the immediate changes could be, they often represented only the first phase of lengthy trajectories.

Nevertheless, it would be foolhardy (and unduly Whiggish) to regard these changes as inevitable; they were the product of many complex and conflicting forces. Although nineteenth-century legislators did create a battery of significant reforms, the antecedents and characteristics of individual measures varied considerably.