Stone moved from the study of the political importance of families to studies of their internal structure, helping to open up the field of new social history. In "The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800" (1977) Stone used quantitative methods to study family life. The book was very well received. Writing in the "Times Literary Supplement," Keith Thomas described it as "easily Professor Stone's most ambitious book yet, even though it comes from the pen of a historian who has by now produced some 3,000 pages in hard covers. Lawrence Stone is one of the most buoyantly invigorating figures on the contemporary historical scene, and his new work displays his usual attributes: voracious reading, a striking capacity for synthesis and an ability to write vivid, continuously interesting prose... He has offered an indispensable chart to a landscape which it will take at least another generation of historians to explore with any precision. Indeed, "The Family, Sex and Marriage" is reminiscent of one of those pioneering maps from the age of discovery." Writing in the "New York Review of Books", J H Plumb said "Professor Stone raises vast issues, settles them provocatively, and underpins his solutions with a wealth of illustration." Joseph Kett, in the "New York Times Book Review", said "Vast in theme, exhaustive in research and with a cast of characters beyond counting, the result is a veritable "War and Peace" of social history. Truly, this is scholarship on the grand scale."