Law in Eighteenth Century English Literature

Rebecca Probert, University of Warwick School of Law, has published "Examining Law Through the Lens of Literature: The Formation of Marriage in Eighteenth-Century England," in the journal Law & Humanities (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This article examines what eighteenth-century novels and plays can tell us about the formation of marriage both before and after the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753. It shows how the practices and, perhaps more crucially, the assumptions, of fictional characters were consistent with legal sources of the time, and that such primary sources fundamentally undermine many modern analyses of the making of marriage.

The entire text is available through subscription.