Examines how and why marriage plots became the English novel's most popular form in the eighteenth century. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century English literature and culture as well as feminist literary history.

The story of the English marriage is unique and eccentric. Long after the rest of Europe and neighbouring Scotland had reformed their marriage laws, England clung to the chaotic and contradictory laws of the medieval Church, making it all too easy to enter into a marriage but virtually impossible to end an unhappy one. If England was a 'paradise for wives' it could only have been through the feistiness of the women. Married women were placed in the same legal category as lunatics. While Englishmen prided themselves on their devotion to liberty, their wives were no freer than slaves. It was a husband's jealously guarded right to beat his wife, as long as the stick was no bigger than his thumb. Only after 1882 could a married woman even retain her own property. But then marriage was all about property in a society which was both mercenary and violent, where a girl was virtually sold into marriage and a price was put on a wife's chastity. With a cast of hundreds, from loyal and devoted wives in troubled times to those who featured in notorious trials for adultery, from abusive husbands whose excesses were only gradually curbed by the law to the modern phenomenon of the toxic wife, acclaimed historian Maureen Waller draws on intimate letters, diaries, court documents and advice books to trace the evolution of the English marriage. It is social history at its most revealing, astonishing and entertaining.

Slaves, mistresses, concubines – the English courts have used these terms to describe polygamous wives in the past, but are they still seen this way today? Using a critical postcolonial feminist lens, this book provides a contextualized exploration of English legal responses to polygamy. Through the legacies of British imperialism, the book shows how attitudes to polygamy are shaped by indifference and hostility towards its participants. This goes beyond the law, as shown by the stories of women shared throughout the book negotiating their identities and relationships in the UK today. Through its analysis, the book demonstrates how polygamy and polygamous wives are subjected to imperialist and orientalist discourses which dehumanise them for practising a relationship that has existed for millennia.

V. 1-11. House of Lords (1677-1865) -- v. 12-20. Privy Council (including Indian Appeals) (1809-1865) -- v. 21-47. Chancery (including Collateral reports) (1557-1865) -- v. 48-55. Rolls Court (1829-1865) -- v. 56-71. Vice-Chancellors' Courts (1815-1865) -- v. 72-122. King's Bench (1378-1865) -- v. 123-144. Common Pleas (1486-1865) -- v. 145-160. Exchequer (1220-1865) -- v. 161-167. Ecclesiastical (1752-1857), Admiralty (1776-1840), and Probate and Divorce (1858-1865) -- v. 168-169. Crown Cases (1743-1865) -- v. 170-176. Nisi Prius (1688-1867).

This book sheds light on the shaping of the English Bible and its impact on early modern English society and culture.