A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3
George Elliott HowardProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 3.8- Word count
- 1.2M words
- Chapters
- 122
Tags
English Originals Social Sciences Historical ReappraisalAcademic StudyTraditional AestheticsCultural ChangeCross-Cultural ViewFemale PerspectiveSummary
Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3 by George Elliott HowardAuthor: Howard, George Elliott, 1849-1928,Language: English, Class: HQ: Social sciences: The family, Marriage, Sex and Gender, Release Date: Jun 2, 2015Editor's review
Howard's A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Volume 1, is an early work of institutional history with a social-science orientation, examining marriage at the intersection of law, custom, religion, and family organization, with attention to long-term institutional change and the handling of primary sources. Its strength lies in its broad perspective and clear framework, which restore marriage from a private matter to a social-institutional question and offer reference value for understanding family history, legal history, and early social-science research approaches. The prose is academic exposition, dense with information, and requires patience in following the argument. The views carry the imprint of the early twentieth century, and judgments concerning gender and the family should be read critically. It is suitable as background reading in institutional history and the sociology of the family, and for readers interested in the evolution of marriage law who wish to survey it systematically. Reading by theme with notes is recommended over a single continuous read-through.Who it's for
A good fit for
- Scholars researching family history, the evolution of marriage law, and the history of social institutions.
- Sociology and law students seeking supplementary background reading in institutional history.
- Readers with a systematic interest in the changing customs of marriage who can read academic English.
- Researchers needing English primary sources for citation and comparison in their papers.
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking only light, popular family stories and lacking patience for academic reading.
- Readers expecting cutting-edge contemporary gender theory and new historical sources.
- Those who struggle with English reading and are unwilling to use reference tools.
Reading tips
- Begin with the table of contents and chapter summaries, sketch a timeline of institutional change, then return to read the arguments in detail.
- Read in thematic groups—law, religion, custom—making excerpt cards for each.
- Mark the author's period-bound judgments with annotations for later critical citation.
- Read alongside modern works on family history to compare methods and conclusions.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
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- 122
FAQ
Is this book suitable as an introduction to marriage history?
It can serve as background reading, but it is not easy. It is an early academic work with dense argumentation and period limitations. Beginners should first read modern general histories to build a framework, then use this book to supplement the institutional-history perspective and early research approaches.Why only Volume 1?
The source shows this is the first of a three-volume work, and its content does not cover the full evolution of the institution. Readers should keep the volume scope in mind and cite the volume number to avoid treating Volume 1's conclusions as the work's overall argument.Can the views in the book be quoted directly?
They can be cited as material in the history of scholarship, but not as current settled conclusions. The author lived at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and judgments concerning gender and the family carry period biases; when quoting, note the historical context and compare with later research.This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
George Elliott Howard Author · American · 1849–1928George Elliott Howard (1849–1928) was an American historian and sociologist born in Saratoga, New York. He taught at the University of Nebraska and Stanford University, and served as president of the American Sociological Association in 1917. His major work is the three-volume A History of Matrimonial Institutions (1904), which combines historical source scholarship with a comparative sociological perspective to trace the evolution of marriage and family institutions; it is regarded as one of the founding works of the sociology of marriage and the family. The library holds Volumes 1 through 3 of this work. Beyond the above, public information on his life and academic career is limited, and his contribution lies chiefly in the direction of research opened up by this work.