Beverly J. Bossler’s study of the marriage and kinship practices of grand councilors and the Wu-chou local elite falls within the scope of the social history of China in the seventh to thirteenth centuries. Largely relying on privately commissioned funerary inscriptions of mostly men and some women, Bossler marshals ample documentary evidence to confirm an important theme in current scholarship: the transformation and expansion of the educated class from aristocratic pedigree to the political elite, whose survival depended on success in the civil service examinations, local economic clout, property base, and marriage alliances...The author’s contribution lies in providing informative marriage data from screening the large number of funerary inscriptions, the data confirms that marriage was ‘an integrating force in society’ and that public office has a close connection to social and financial status.
