{"product_id":"working-class-courtship-marriage-and-divorce-eleanor-gordon-9780198789314","title":"Working-Class Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce in Scotland, 1855-1939","description":"This is the first book-length study of the history of working-class courtship and marriage in Scotland, from the establishment of civil registration to the introduction in 1939 of legislation which abolished irregular marriage and introduced civil marriage. Adopting a 'life course' approach, the book explores the social, economic, and cultural contexts of romantic partnerships, from courtship through to marital or family dissolution. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing from a wide range of sources that capture official accounts and discourses on the one hand, and the testimony and experience of working-class people on the other, the book offers a uniquely broad and textured view of courtship and marriage in this period. In so doing, it advances recent historiographical debates surrounding marriage in the Anglophone world, particularly the mutability of 'love', and whether the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries constituted a social and cultural 'turning point' for the working classes in terms of choice of marriage partner, the nature of the marital relationship, and the parent-child relationship. The book also engages with debates about extra-marital sexual activity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whether the family was more or less 'stable' than the contemporary family, and the different ways that marriages broke down before the advent of divorce reform. This has important implications for wider European and North American historiography, and raises timely questions about the primacy of the 'traditional family' in policy and public discourse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Eleanor Gordon,Jeff Meek,Katie Barclay\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0198789319\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780198789314\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/20\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 288\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover","brand":"Eleanor Gordon","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47637437087999,"sku":"9780198789314","price":130.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_57fc5684-2809-43d7-9448-8fd6642ce9df.jpg?v=1765116215","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/working-class-courtship-marriage-and-divorce-eleanor-gordon-9780198789314","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}