French Revolutionary Legislation on Illegitimacy 1789-1804

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1936. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. xii, 102 pages. Footnotes. Includes Preface, Introduction, The Law of Bastardy, The Law of Nature, The Revolutionary Law; and Conclusion. Also includes Appendix A, the main sources of this study for the period of the National Assembly and the Convention. Appendix B discusses the law on the status and inheritance rights of children born out of wedlock. The book also contains an index. This is Harvard Historical Monographs IX published under the Direction of the Department of History from the Income of The Robert Louis Stroock Fund. Clarence Crane Brinton (1898 - 1968) was an American historian of France, as well as an historian of ideas. His most famous work, The Anatomy of Revolution (1938) likened the dynamics of revolutionary movements to the progress of fever. He entered Harvard University in 1915. His excellent academic performance enabled him to win a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in 1923. Brinton then began teaching at Harvard University that same year, becoming full professor in 1942 and remaining at Harvard until his death. He was McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History from 1946 to 1968. During World War II he was for a time Chief of Research and Analysis in London in the Office of Strategic Services. He was also Fire Marshal for St. Paul's Cathedral in London, which withstood the Blitz with minor damages. After the war, he was commended by the United States Army for "Conspicuous Contribution to the Liberation of France" and was chairman of the Harvard Society of Fellows in the late 1940s. Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, illegitimacy (or bastardy) has been the status of a child born outside marriage, such a child being known as a bastard, love child, or illegitimate when such a distinction has been made from other children. In Scots law, the terminology of natural son or natural daughter has the same implications. The prefix "Fitz-" added to a surname (e.g., FitzRoy) sometimes denoted that the child's parents were not married at the time of birth. Depending on local legislation, legitimacy can affect a child's rights of inheritance to the putative father's estate and the child's right to bear the father's surname or hereditary title. Illegitimacy has also had consequences for the mother's and child's right to support from the putative father. This study is a relatively specialize piece of historical research into a specific problem. It does indeed imply a point of view, but nothing so ambitious as a sociological system. This study attempts to trace some aspects of the struggle between theory and habit to master the same individuls--most of them quitegood Jacobins. Its documentary basis owns much to pamphlets in the Doulay de la Meruthe collection in the library of Harvard University.