Volume 24, Number 19 · November 24, 1977
The Rise of Love
By J.H. Plumb
The Family, Sex and Marriage in England: 1500-1800
by Lawrence Stone
Harper & Row, 800 pp., $30.00
Professor Stone may be the boldest historian alive. Certainly he seems almost recklessly brave by the timid standards of the profession. He can write large books or short ones, but he cannot write a book about a trivial theme. His first large book, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641, analyzed by dexterous use of social as well as economic history the collapse of the English aristocracy before the Civil War. It is an immense book, crowded with detail; here and there it may be faulted on minor matters, but it has established itself as a classic and its major thesis concerning the 'rise of the gentry' is universally accepted.
Review, 2394 words
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