Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady - Softcover

Summerscale, Kate

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408831244 ISBN 13: 9781408831243

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2013

Synopsis

When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, and she was to find it hard to shake...

In one of the most notorious divorce cases of the nineteenth century, Isabella Robinson's scandalous secrets were exposed to the world. Kate Summerscale brings vividly to life a frustrated Victorian wife's longing for passion and learning, companionship and love, in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality.

About this title

Review:

Simply superb (Alexandra Harris Guardian)

Extraordinary (Phillipa Gregory Daily Telegraph)

Like her previous book, I was hooked after the first few pages. It's as good as non-fiction could possibly get (Victoria Hislop Daily Mail)

Grippingly suspenseful ... Mrs Robinson's Disgrace displays a scalpel-sharp investigative mind, and it vividly conveys the immediate surroundings of the case, from the stench of the polluted Thames infiltrating Westminster Hall to the degradations of Victorian marriage, as evidenced in contemporary divorce cases (John Carey Sunday Times)

Summerscale strikes nonfiction gold for the third time (Daneet Steffens Independent on Sunday)

Summerscale's brilliance lies not only in recognising the power of a particular story, but in charting, with beautiful precision, its strange echoes and reverberations

(Craig Brown Mail on Sunday)

I'm all admiration: she has turned a sepia photograph, curling and tattered, into a film that runs through the mind in glorious and unimpeachable Technicolor

(Rachel Cooke Observer)

Mesmerising (Boyd Tonkin Independent)

Told with dazzling detail and exquisite tenderness, this non-fiction tale reads like a perfect novel (Elle Magazine)

Utterly engrossing (Fanny Blake Woman & Home)

Book Description:

From the number one bestselling, multi-award-winning author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408831244
• ISBN 13: 9781408831243
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320