Matthew H. Sommer teaches Chinese history at Stanford University. He is the author of Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China.

"Sommer's exhaustive analysis of legal cases involving illegal marriage practices is the first systematic attempt to document their prevalence and grapple with their implications for our understanding of gender order and state-society relations in the Qing." -- Janet M Theiss Cross Currents "The book, based on a thorough and probing reading of a prodigious number of heretofore unexamined archival documents, offers unparalleled insights... with its vivid recounting of the passion, violence, and desperation that motivated the men and women implicated in illicit practices of polyandry, wife sale, and prostitution, it animates the historical record." American Historical Review

Matthew H. Sommer teaches Chinese history at Stanford University. He is the author of Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China.

"Sommer's exhaustive analysis of legal cases involving illegal marriage practices is the first systematic attempt to document their prevalence and grapple with their implications for our understanding of gender order and state-society relations in the Qing." -- Janet M Theiss Cross Currents "The book, based on a thorough and probing reading of a prodigious number of heretofore unexamined archival documents, offers unparalleled insights... with its vivid recounting of the passion, violence, and desperation that motivated the men and women implicated in illicit practices of polyandry, wife sale, and prostitution, it animates the historical record." American Historical Review