Finding a Mate in Late Tsarist Russia The Evidence from Marriage Advertisements

This article examines a hitherto unstudied source - the marriage newspapers of late tsarist Russia - for the light it can shed on two important but elusive subjects for historical inquiry. First, the history of marriage in an era of astonishingly rapid social and economic change. Second, the history...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inCultural and social history Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 51 - 72
Main Author Lovell, Stephen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 01.01.2007
Taylor & Francis Group LLC
Subjects
Advertising
gender
Marriage
Marriage brokerage
Mate selection
Methods
Russia
Social aspects
Russia
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:This article examines a hitherto unstudied source - the marriage newspapers of late tsarist Russia - for the light it can shed on two important but elusive subjects for historical inquiry. First, the history of marriage in an era of astonishingly rapid social and economic change. Second, the history of social identities. It is argued that the small and apparently trivial texts of marriage advertisements offer a rare opportunity to see the language of social description in cultural practice - to discover, in other words, how the various labels of class, estate, occupation and status acquired meaning in people's everyday lives and discourse.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:1478-0038
1478-0046
DOI:10.1080/14780038.2007.11425737