Giles Jacob

Giles Jacob (1686 – 8 May 1744) was a British legal writer whose works included 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.

Giles was born in Romsey, Hampshire, and was baptized on 22 November 1686. Among eight children, Giles was the only son of Henry and Susannah Jacob. Henry Jacob was a maltster who lived until 1735.

Giles Jacob appears to have trained at the law in some manner, and was a secretary to Sir William Blathwayt. Working for Blathwayt, he engaged in litigation and dispensation, probably in manorial courts.

Jacob's first book, The Compleat Court-Keeper (1713), has detailed instructions for how to practically administer estate matters. He combined this with a chronological summary of statute law. Both works were financially successful.

Jacob always had an interest in contemporary poetry and the literary life, and in 1714 he wrote a farce called Love in a Wood, or, The Country Squire. This play was never produced. He persisted, however, and in 1717 he wrote a satire of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock in the form of The Rape of the Smock. The poem was low and bawdy, and the next year he wrote Tractatus de hermaphroditis., published by Edmund Curll in 1718 with Ioannes Henricus Meibomius's A treatise of the use of flogging in venereal affairs (a translation of his De flagrorum usu in re veneria).

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