A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 3 of 3

George Elliott HowardProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.1
Word count
1.1M words
Chapters
113

Tags

English Originals History and Culture Marriage InstitutionLegal HistorySocial HistorySocial ObservationFamily StructurePower GameMoral DilemmaAcademic Study19th CenturyCultural Change

Summary

This is the final volume of George Elliott Howard's three-volume history of matrimonial institutions, a classic scholarly work in the social sciences, in the history of the family, marriage, and gender. As a public-domain ebook its value lies not in popular narrative but in its systematic historical treatment of how marriage institutions evolved in Western society; the third volume continues the framework of the first two and suits supplementary research reading. Its strength is a scholarly-historical awareness in the organization of materials, showing how scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries understood the relations among marriage, family, and law—still methodologically instructive for researchers today. It is better suited to a quiet desk than to fragmented commute time; reading it alongside works on family history, legal history, or gender studies helps distinguish the author's period limitations from his questions. Because the book is early, some views and wording bear historical marks; readers should keep a critical eye and treat it as a primary scholarly document rather than a definitive general history.

Editor's review

This is the final volume of George Elliott Howard's three-volume history of matrimonial institutions, a classic scholarly work in the social sciences on the history of the family, marriage, and gender. As a public-domain ebook, its value lies not in popular narrative but in its systematic historical treatment of how matrimonial institutions evolved in Western society; the third volume continues the framework of the first two and is suitable as supplementary reading for research. Its strength is the scholarly-historical awareness in how the material is organized: readers can see how scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries understood the relationship between marriage, the family, and law, which still offers methodological reference for researchers today. It is better suited to a quiet desk than to fragmented commuting time; reading it alongside works on family history, legal history, or gender studies is recommended so as to discern the author's historical limitations and problem consciousness. Because the original was written long ago, some views and wording bear the marks of their time; readers should keep a critical eye and treat it as a primary scholarly document rather than a definitive general history.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and introduction first to grasp this volume's place in the whole work and the scope of its argument.
  2. Keep a notebook for key concepts and source citations for easy reference.
  3. Read alongside general histories of family or legal history, noting the author's historical standpoint.
  4. When encountering unfamiliar institutional terms, skim past them first and review them after finishing the chapter.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project 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. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
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  113. 113

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? Can I read it without English? The book is in the original English, released by Project Gutenberg. The text contains many scholarly terms and names of historical institutions, so reading it without some English foundation will be difficult; a college-level English ability or dictionary tools are recommended.
Do I need to read the first two volumes before the third? The third volume continues the framework of the first two, so reading it directly may leave one with an insufficient grasp of the overall thread. If time is limited, read this volume's introduction first and consult the tables of contents of the first two volumes to understand the scope of the study before entering the main text.
Are this book's views still applicable today? As a scholarly work written long ago, its documentary value and methodological awareness still offer reference, but some views and wording carry the limitations of their time. It is best read critically as a document in the history of scholarship rather than as a definitive general history.

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About the author

George Elliott Howard Author · American · 1849–1928

George 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.