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Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Mrs Robinson's Disgrace by Kate Summerscale, read by Stephanie Racine.

FROM BRITAIN’S TOP-SELLING TRUE CRIME WRITER

'Extraordinary' PHILIPPA GREGORY, DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Grippingly suspenseful' SUNDAY TIMES

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.

‘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

'Summerscale strikes non-fiction gold for the third time' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

'Moving, compelling and brilliantly executed' DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR

‘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

Critics Review

Simply superb
Guardian
Extraordinary
Daily Telegraph
Like her previous book, I was hooked after the first few pages. It's as good as non-fiction could possibly get
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
Sunday Times
Summerscale strikes nonfiction gold for the third time
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
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
Observer
Mesmerising
Independent
Told with dazzling detail and exquisite tenderness, this non-fiction tale reads like a perfect novel
Elle Magazine
Utterly engrossing
Woman & Home
Riveting
Metro
Absorbing ... a rich and puzzled book
Spectator
Summerscale puts this peculiar case in a wonderfully rich context of fads of the day ... Her courtroom reconstructions are vivid and enthralling, her research is impeccable and her narration coolly authoritative as she draws together what was happening around her subject and makes Mrs Robinson's volatile state of mind much more explicable
Evening Standard
Fascinating
New York Times Book Review
Marvellous
Vogue
A gripping account of Victorian wife Isabella Robinson and her cause célèbre divorce trial
Harper’s Bazaar
Meticulously researched
New York Times
Sensational
Glasgow Herald
Kate Summerscale has a knack for rescuing Victorian histories from obscurity and turning them into the most comprehensive books you're likely to find in any non-fiction section ... Thought-provoking stuff from a writer who, in putting the past in the dock, teaches us about who we are now
Scotsman
Moving, compelling and brilliantly executed
Dan Jones, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year
Author Kate Summerscale
Narrator Stephanie Racine
Duration 9 hours and 13 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781526617514
Format Audiobook
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre Diaries, letters and journals, European history
Availability AU, GB, IE

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