In ... "Mrs Robinson's Disgrace" the same tecnique of historical sleuthing to reconstruct the events that brought one couple to the divorce courts in 1858 -- as before it follows the clues from one case and cover ups that shaped it. Refers to "Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady" by Kate Summerscale:
The chief exhibit is a diary - no blood no corpse in the privy - but a Letts diary that is currently half price in Smith's. A relic of passions that could not be contained and are exposed in the end to the scrutiny of a nation the unfortunate
diarist Isabella Robinson fell in love with a man who was not her husband and wrote her feelings down -
her husband the industrialist Henry Robinson had mistresses and two illegitimate children but for a woman the standards were different and she didnt even own her diary. That seems to be the point that irritates the writer!
The man she loved was the married doctor Edward Lane pioneer homeopath and proprietor of an advanced hydropathy establishment in Surrey where patients were prescribed different kinds of bath - and Isabella spent time at Edward's spa and in his study and did they embark on an affair - lets read on ... NO! I think as the writer
continues to write that nothing in Edward's letters proved it and he was a careful correspondent.
The story is rich in detail and the imaginative curbing of say anger as a modern reader might shout back that this is too dull for us is offset by a delightful twist of excellent storytelling and I could read the storyline all day
were time hanging on my hands ..... great reading pays its own price!