Road to Divorce: England 1530-1987 - Couverture souple

The first full study of a topic rich in historical interest and contemporary importance Despite 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 intimate insights 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.

... 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. (Claire Tomalin, The Independent on Sunday)

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. (Christopher Hibbert, Sunday Times)