Alienated Affections

Book excerpt: Personal accounts of adultery, cruelty, desertion and nullity fill this exposition of divorce and separation in Scotland in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Leah Leneman brings vividly to life the marriages and affairs, loves and hates, tenderness and harshness experienced by men and women whose marriages broke down in this period. Their stories, told in their own words, come from the entire spectrum of Scottish society, from the aristocracy to the 'common' people. Contrary to popular belief, divorce and legal separation were available on equal terms to men and women in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland. Alienated Affections offers an overall picture of this phenomenon, richly illustrated by the experiences of individuals.