Road to Divorce

Before 1857 England was the only Protestant country with virtually no facilities for full divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion, or cruelty. This book tells, for the first time, the complex story of how, from the Reformation to the present, English men and women have contrived to use, twist or defy the law in order to deal with marital breakdown. Lawrence Stone, one of the leading historians of family life, has used personal testimonies from previously unexplored court records to offer astonishingly frank and intimate insights into the changing view about love, sex, adultery, marriage and marital breakdown.