The Family, Sex And Marriage In England 1500-1800
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Across three turbulent centuries of English history, the most intimate corners of domestic life — the marriage bed, the nursery, the deathbed — were shaped by forces far beyond the individual. Lawrence Stone's landmark work The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 chronicles the sweeping transformation of family structures, sexual mores, and emotional bonds from the late medieval period through the dawn of the modern age, arguing that the very nature of human intimacy underwent a profound and irreversible revolution during this era. Drawing on an extraordinary breadth of diaries, legal records, letters, and demographic data, Stone presents a portrait of English society in which cold, patriarchal households slowly gave way to the affectionate, child-centred family we recognise today — a transition neither smooth nor inevitable. Stone writes with the commanding authority of a scholar who is equally at home in the archives and in broad historical synthesis, producing a work of immense scope that reshaped the fields of social and demographic history. His analysis of shifting attitudes toward childhood, companionate marriage, and sexual behaviour remains as provocative as it is illuminating, inviting readers to question how deeply historical circumstance inscribes itself upon our most personal relationships. Whether read as social history, cultural analysis, or a meditation on the origins of modern love, this magisterial study leaves one wondering just how much of our intimate lives we truly choose for ourselves.
Author: Lawrence Stone
Format: Paperback
Genre: British & Irish history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Across three turbulent centuries of English history, the most intimate corners of domestic life — the marriage bed, the nursery, the deathbed — were shaped by forces far beyond the individual. Lawrence Stone's landmark work The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 chronicles the sweeping transformation of family structures, sexual mores, and emotional bonds from the late medieval period through the dawn of the modern age, arguing that the very nature of human intimacy underwent a profound and irreversible revolution during this era. Drawing on an extraordinary breadth of diaries, legal records, letters, and demographic data, Stone presents a portrait of English society in which cold, patriarchal households slowly gave way to the affectionate, child-centred family we recognise today — a transition neither smooth nor inevitable. Stone writes with the commanding authority of a scholar who is equally at home in the archives and in broad historical synthesis, producing a work of immense scope that reshaped the fields of social and demographic history. His analysis of shifting attitudes toward childhood, companionate marriage, and sexual behaviour remains as provocative as it is illuminating, inviting readers to question how deeply historical circumstance inscribes itself upon our most personal relationships. Whether read as social history, cultural analysis, or a meditation on the origins of modern love, this magisterial study leaves one wondering just how much of our intimate lives we truly choose for ourselves.