Uncertain Unions and Broken Lives: Marriage and Divorce in England, 1660-1857 - Softcover

About the Author:
Lawrence Stone is the author of many highly acclaimed books, including Road to Divorce, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, and The Open Society.

"The twenty-five stories of Uncertain Unions often read like graphic versions of Defoe or Richardson. They are organized into three sections, as illustrations of three themes: courtship and contract, forced marriage, and clandestine marriage....Few other historians have so successfully combined analytical and narrative approaches and few works of hsitory have offered such an intimate and detailed view of the social customs of early modern England."--Commonweal

"Professor Stone's inimitable skill as a story-teller brings the formal record to life, and puts human flesh on the bare bones of the law of marriage."--The Sunday Telegraph

"Here are topless frolics, lies and eavesdropping, pregnancies and false promises, angry parents, pretty daughters, feeble sons, and much marrying in haste and repenting at leisure....There's not a dull story in the book. Each one illustrates a point that interests Stone as a historian, but his eye for the ridiculous or touching detail ensure that they can be read as the purest of entertainment."--Independent

"Lawrence Stone never tackles small topics, nor is he humbled by the enormities of his undertakings....These volumes will be much read and will give their readers insights into some of the more colorful episodes in the social and sexual lives of eighteenth-century England's rich and famous....Professional historians are always bemoaning the wide gap between the limited readership of our rather inaccessible and dry monographs and a potential readership whose lives would be enriched if they only could be persuaded to read history, Lawrence Stone has done valuable work in narrowing the gap."--Journal of the History of Sexuality