After Marriage in the Long Eighteenth Century

This book examines the intersections between the ways that marriage was represented in eighteenth-century writing and art, experienced in society, and regulated by law. The interdisciplinary and comparative essays explore the marital experience beyond the 'matrimonial barrier' to encompass representations of married life including issues of spousal abuse, parenting, incest, infidelity and the period after the end of marriage, to include annulment, widowhood and divorce. The chapters range from these focuses on legal and social histories of marriage to treatments of marriage in eighteenth-century periodicals, to depictions of married couples and families in eighteenth-century art, to parallels in French literature and diaries, to representations of violence and marriage in Gothic novels, and to surveys of same-sex partnerships. The volume is aimed towards students and scholars working in the long eighteenth century, gender studies, women's writing, publishing history, and art and legal historians.

Karl Leydecker has been Vice-Principal Learning and Teaching and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Dundee in Scotland since 2013. Before that he was Dean of Humanities at the University of Kent, UK. His research interests include marriage and divorce in western literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Jenny DiPlacidi is Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Studies and Romanticism at the University of Kent, UK. Her research interests include representations of incest, sexuality and gender in British and American literature of the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with a focus on the Gothic and magazine fiction.