In her follow-up to the bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale brings vividly to life this story of how of how Mrs Robinson seemed to have brought about her own disgrace. In 1858, a month after the first Divorce Court in England opened its doors to the public, Henry Oliver Robinson petitioned for the dissolution of his marriage on the grounds that his wife, Isabella, had committed adultery. As evidence, Henry produced a five-year diary in Isabella's handwriting. The secret words of the journal were read out to the court and printed in countless newspapers. Its content, in spirit close to Gustave Flaubert's new and scandalous novel Madame Bovary, was shocking: the diary detailed a Victorian wife's longing for passion and learning, companionship and love, in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality...