Marital Violence
An English Family History, 1660–1857

"In this well-structured, clearly written text, Elizabeth Foyster challenges some of the central arguments in histories of domestic violence...Using the rich documentation of marital violence in church and secular court records, supplemented by newspapers, government documents, and more private recordings in diaries and correspondence, Foyster presents convincing evidence of the need to rethink our assumptions about the impact of such things as the ideology of domesticity and increasing privatization on marital violence.... There is much here to contemplate."

-Marjorie Levine-Clark, University of Colorado at Denver, H-Law

"This book is not only well researched and structured, but also well defined."
-Gabriella Erdelyi, Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

"One of the principal strengths of this new book is its chronological range...Rich in breadth, particularly having adopted such a broad chronological frame, this book in important ways questions received chronologies that have informed histories of violence and family life, and, by doing so, will no doubt renew and reinvigorate discussion of its central themes."
-Alexandra Shepard, American Historical Review

"...this book takes up an exceedingly intractable set of sources and issues, and, in the end, makes an important and brave contribution to our knowledge of marriage and family violence in the early modern period."
-Margaret R. Hunt, Canadian Journal of History