Mrs Robinson's Disgrace

The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady

By: Kate Summerscale

Narrated by: Stephanie Racine

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

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

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 19th 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.

©2012 Kate Summerscale (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

"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)

ALovely Book about a Loveable Lady!

This was an excellent, beautiful, and compelling history of marriage, sex, sexual pathology, hydropathy, phrenology, eroticism, double standards, adultery, divorce, and the role of the diary in the Victorian period. Rather than telling history, Kate Summerscale organizes her primary sources in such a commanding way as to let them show us the Victorian period with all its sexual prejudices, peculiarities, erotic and subversive undercurrents. The historical contexts she brings to these sources were always refreshing and insightful. Never condescending, this book taught me a tremendous amount about sexual and legal history in the Victorian period. It was well-structured, respectful of its subject matter, seldom drifted in academic waffle land, and Stephanie Racine also does a great job reading "Mrs Robinson's Disgrace". My only criticisms might have concerned a request for more breadth and detail in areas, but at 9 hours listening time, it is was a highly economic read. I listened to the book in two sittings, and I will definitely listen to this book again.

Thank goodness we live now and not then

Despite all the problems of the contemporary world, this true account of the gross unfairness which women experienced in a country like the UK not too far back in history, makes one exceedingly fortunate to live in modern western society - although we know that many parts of the world still greatly suppress women.
They may not have been forced to wear shackles or work in the cotton fields, but in many ways, women were akin to slaves with very few options in life.
A story well told by a gifted author and superbly read by the narrator.