An understanding of the birth and development of the general theory of contracts is vital for understanding its content today, and inevitably influences new theoretical formulations. Where theorists go with their own work depends in large part on the particular version of events which they accept. One of the most influential and enduring accounts has been that of Grant Gilmore in The Death of Contract. This article offers a new and quite different account of the same theme - the birth and development of the general theory up to the early '70s, when Gilmore was writing, and suggests a rather broader-based and more empirically justified genesis for the theory.