FOR AN AMERICAN "conservatism" that has lost its way amid the contemporary welter of rights and equality, there can be no stronger corrective than Louis de Bonald's On Divorce. Writton during the 1790s, when its author was in hiding from the revolutionary authorities, and published in 1801, this seminal work by one of the principal founders of conservatism has never before been translated into English, an oversight now remedied by Nicholas Davidson. In a powerful introductory essay, Davidson argues against the current habit of dividing the world up into "women's questions," "men's questions,"...
