This is a collection of extracts from novels, short stories, letters and poems, designed to illustrate marriage's many temperatures and moods, its descents from rapture to despair. Grouped under five headings - Proposals and Arrangements, Loss, Day By Day, The Rough, The Best Of It - the choices are eclectic and often unexpected. Writers whose works are featured include Jane Austen, Elizabeth von Arnim, Stella Tillyard, Robert Graves, T.S. Eliot and Erich Maria Remarque.