This book examines the regulation of the earliest securities markets in England and the United States, from their origins in the 1690s through the 1850s. Professor Banner argues that during the reign of Queen Anne a complex and moderately effective body of regulatory control was already extant, reflecting widespread Anglo-American attitudes toward securities speculation. He uses traditional legal materials as well as a broad range of nonlegal sources to show that securities regulation has a much longer ancestry than is often supposed.