The first full study of a topic rich in historical interest and contemporary importanceDespite the infamous divorce of Henry VIII in 1529, subsequent moral, political, and religious attitudes ensured that until 1857, England was the only Protestant country with virtually no facilities for full divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion, or cruelty. Using a mass of transcribed legal testimonies, taken from hitherto unexplored court records, Professor Stone uncovers the means by which laity and lawyers reformed the divorce laws, and offers astonishingly frank and intimateinsights into our ancestors' changing views about what makes a marriage.Using personal accounts in which witnesses speak freely about their moral attitudes towards love, sex, adultery, and marriage, Lawrence Stone reveals, for the first time, the full and complex story of how English men and women have contrived to use, twist, or defy the law in order to deal with marital breakdown.
Format:
CONTRIBUTORS: Lawrence Stone
EAN: 9780198226512
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
PAGES:
WEIGHT: 988 g
HEIGHT: 241 cm
PUBLISHED BY: Oxford University Press
DATE PUBLISHED: 1990-10-11
CITY:
GENRE: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Divorce & Separation, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General
WIDTH: 164 cm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
England, c 1500 onwards to present day, Sociology: family and relationships, Social and cultural history
... engrossing and masterly historical survey ...Road to Divorce is a serious book with a sombre subject. It is also, I"m afraid, magnificently entertaining. It will be supplemented by two further volumes of case histories, referred to in the text but not yet available, Uncertain Unions and Broken Lives. Heartlessly, perhaps, I can hardly wait to read them., Stone has written a stimulating companion to his fascinating Family, Sex and Marriage in England ... another splendid and original work by our leading historian of the family., ... engrossing and masterly historical survey ...Road to Divorce is a serious book with a sombre subject. It is also, I"m afraid, magnificently entertaining. It will be supplemented by two further volumes of case histories, referred to in the text but not yet available, Uncertain Unions and Broken Lives. Heartlessly, perhaps, I can hardly wait to read them., Stone has written a stimulating companion to his fascinating Family, Sex and Marriage in England ... another splendid and original work by our leading historian of the family.
Lawrence Stone is Dodge Professor of History, and Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University.
