Hello,
Don't know if anyone can help, but I'm currently writing an extensive historical research paper on the legal position and general conditions of women in the Georgian and Regency period in England and I am therefore looking for some source material on British marriage law, family law and especially inheritance/property law (or just generally law material on the subject of women) from the period. Does anyone know any good sites where I can find such material or any historians who might have published anything on this topic? I have looked around the university library and on the internet but so far what I have found that could be of any use has been sparse.
Thank you in advance,
- A desperate university student
I've got a few things I can recommend!
English Society in the Eighteenth Century, Roy Porter, Penguin - This is more of an overview of the period and is a bit old, but it might be useful to get you started on the topic as a whole.
Law, Land, & Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300-1800, Eileen Spring, University of North Carolina Press - This is probably the most apropos of all my suggestions. I mean, it is all. about. inheritance, property law, primogeniture, entails, the strict settlement, etc. Fairly critical of older scholarship, and extremely thorough.
Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis, 1700-1850: Pregnancy, the Poor Law and Provision, Samantha Williams, Palgrave Macmillan - This is really more about the flipside of what you're looking for, but I think that can be helpful in that the way the law dealt with illegitimacy can tell us something about legitimate birth and inheritance. Worth thinking about!
Marital Violence: An English Family History, 1660-1857, Elizabeth Foyster, Cambridge University Press - This focuses on the aspects of marriage/family law when families' behavior broke down. Again, kind of the negative space around what you're looking at, but again, worth thinking about.
Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England, Joan Perkin, Routledge - This focuses on the entire nineteenth century, so much of it will not be spectacularly relevant for you, but it thoroughly goes through every level of society, and the Victorian period can be a useful contrast.
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