Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England, 1660-1857 - Couverture rigide

12 fascinating case studies. (Gazette Telegraph, Oct 3, 1993)

"Broken Lives" completes the masterful trilogy Mr. Stone began with "Road to Divorce" and "Uncertain Unions," ... Most of the material comes from the archives of ecclesiastical courts ... The richness of these archives is astonishing ... In Mr Stone's lively retelling, many of the cases read like lurid bodice-rippers written by Daniella Defoe. (The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 1993)

my rasciest read of the year. ... and what makes it doubly rewarding is that it was written by a Princeton historian with a high moral and academic purpose. (Toronto Star, 4 October 1993)

He derives unconcealed enjoyment from the human comedy and he manages to transmit that enjoyment to the reader ... Stone is a superb narrator. His prose is lucid, vivid, and incisive, and he can achieve some richly comic effects ... Many readers will enjoy these books for the titillating pleasures they afford; others may be repelled by their coarseness, violence, and brutality. No one will be bored; and those seeking a colorful guide to the sexual excapades of the Hanoverian aristocracy need look no further. (The New York Review)

a unique and vivid account of seething emotions above and below stairs. I cannot think of another book that has lit up a period of domestic history so brilliantly ... Lawrence Stone has tremendous elegance and authority, it has the compulsive qualities of a hot issue of the News of the World. There is no more fascinating way to study the fabric of a society than to see it unpicked. Compulsive reading (Susan Jeffries, Literary Review)

The great strengths of the book are Lawrence Stone's narrative skill and imaginative sensitivity to character and situation ... These are fascinating stories, most divertingly recounted. (Paul Langford, Sunday Telegraph)

Its purpose is serious, and superbly well accomplished. Stone describes 12 wretched marriages, and in doing so gives a comprehensive and intimate account of past lives ... a completely readable book ... This book is often painful, sometimes even disgusting to read ... includes much that is sordid and an equal amount that is pitiful, but it is consistently interesting and sometimes powerfully moving. This is social history at its best - precise, minutely observant, familiar and astonishing. (Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times)

A fascinating collection of case studies of marital discord among the 17th and 18th century upper classes ... Broken Lives stands on its own, and might best be recommended not as an accompaniment to Stone's earlier tomes but as a follow-up moving backwards ... By the end of the book, the notion of just desserts seems far-fetched. then is the time to turn to the introduction, where Stone makes excellent sense of it all. (Andrew Adonis, Weekend Financial Times)

higher education is no bar to enjoyment of sexual scandal ... We all love lascivious lords and ladies, especially those whose matrimonial laundry is publicly washed in the courts and the press. (New Statesman and Society)

Broken Lives ... provides striking case studies to underpin his broader technical and theoretical account in Road to Divorce ... Stone's astonishing detail is due to the archaic legal procedure whereby ecclesiastical courts interrogated witnesses privately ... marvellously rich data and meticulous yet compassionate story-telling make the past startlingly present ... superb social history. (Jenny Uglow, The Independent on Sunday)

In Road to Divorce, Lawrence Stone explored and analysed the ambiguous nature of the law and pratice concerning marriage, separation, and divorce in England from 1530 to the present day. He showed how husbands and wives, lovers and lawyers, adapted, circumvented, of defied the law in order to achieve their end, namely either a secure marriage, or a marital separation on favourable terms. In Uncertain Unions, he offered a series of detailed case-studies, which painted a vivid picture of how certain individuals coped with the manifold uncertainties of the law of marriage before the Marriage Act of 1753. Now, Broken Lives completes the trilogy. In it Profesfs Stone offers a second set of detailed case-studies, this time about how the break-up and dissolution of marriages was contrived before the first Divorce Act in 1857. Individuals in their own words explain their actions and feelings about one another in dramatic court-room confrontations, while behind the scenes they were conducting secret negotiations, and offering massive bribes to witnesses either to commit perjury or to hold their tongues. These stories offer astonishing insights into many previously unknown aspects of marital life and marital breakdown in early modern England. They also provide sobering evidence of the huge gap between the enacted law and actual practice.