Road to Divorce: England, 1530-1987 - Hardcover

Stone, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198226519 ISBN 13: 9780198226512

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1990

Synopsis

Lawrence Stone is one of the world's foremost historians. In such widely acclaimed volumes as The Crisis of the Aristocracy, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England and The Open Society, he has shown himself to be a provocative and engaging writer as well as a master chronicler of English family life. Now, with Road to Divorce, Stone examines the complex ways in which English men and women have used, twisted, and defied the law to deal with marital breakdown.
Despite the infamous divorce of Henry VIII in 1529, Britons before the 20th century were predominantly, in Stone's words, "a non-divorcing and non-separating society." In fact, before divorce was legalized in 1857, England was the only Protestant country with virtually no avenue for divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion, or cruelty. Yet marriages did fail, and in Road to Divorce, Stone examines a goldmine of court records--in which witnesses speak freely about love, sex, adultery, and marriage--memoirs, correspondence, and popular imaginative works to reveal how lawyers and the laity coped with marital discord. Equally important, in tracing the history of divorce, Stone has discovered a way to recapture the slow, irregular, and tentative evolution of moral values concerning relations between the sexes as well as the consequent shift from concepts of patriarchy to those of sexual equality. He thus offers a privileged, indeed almost unique, insight into the interaction of the public spheres of morality, religion, and the law.
Written by the foremost historian of family life, Road to Divorce provides the first full study of a topic rich in historical interest and contemporary importance, one that offers astonishingly frank and intimate insights into our ancestors' changing views about what makes and breaks a marriage.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Much has been written about the history of the family and how marriages were made in England: this is the first book to tackle the problem of how, why, and on what scale they are broken. Written by the leading historian of family life, 'Road to Divorce' provides the first full study of a topic rich in historical interest and directly relevant to contemporary society.

About the Author

Lawrence Stone is Dodge Professor of History, and Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0198226519
• ISBN 13: 9780198226512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 488