Book description
On a mild winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a
party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of
Edinburgh's Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a grand
sandstone terrace lit by gas lamps.
The guests were gathered in the high, airy drawing rooms on the first
floor, the ladies in glinting silk and satin pulled tight over boned
corsets; the gentlemen in tailcoats, waistcoats and neckties. When Mrs
Robinson joined the throng she was at once enchanted by a Mr Edward
Lane, a handsome medical student ten years her junior. 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,
which she was to find hard to shake... Summerscale painstakingly
analyses medicine, property, divorce and the treatment of women Kate
Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The
Suspicions of Mr Whicher
, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, winner of the
Galaxy British Book of the Year Award, a Richard & Judy Book Club
pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling
The Queen of Whale Cay
, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread
biography award. Kate Summerscale has also judged various literary
competitions including the Booker Prize. She lives in north London.
Mrs Robinson s Disgrace
is her third book.
