True-life scandal that inspired Kate’s latest bestseller

After the huge success of her previous book, real-life murder mystery The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, author Kate Summerscale admits that she was a little daunted at getting started on her latest publication, the equally compelling Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace.

“In some ways, though, I felt encouraged by the fact that people had liked Mr Whicher,” she says. “And that gave me the confidence to write this.”

Summerscale specialises in ‘novelizing’ true stories and she first came across the Victorian divorce scandal involving unhappy wife Isabella Robinson and her younger lover Dr Edward 
Lane while she was researching The Suspicions 
of Mr Whicher.

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“I found this story very gripping and I liked the unresolved quality of it,” she says. “I wasn’t sure if there would be enough material to make a book but it kept nagging away at me.”

The Robinson case rested on the fact that Isabella had kept a diary of her innermost feelings about, and assignations with, the charming young married doctor. When her boorish husband Henry discovered his wife’s private journal he filed for divorce and the court case briefly became a sensation in the 1850s with extensive extracts from the diary published in the press.

“I started my research with the newspaper reports,” says Summerscale. “They included transcripts of what went on in court and I found the 
legal papers relating to the case.” Then she came across an archive of letters in Scotland. “They provided information that neither the diary extracts nor the court transcripts could. They filled in the gaps between the private and the public worlds.” Summerscale read widely on the changes taking place in the divorce law, the position of women in Victorian society and the progressive medical ideas, such as hydrotherapy and phrenology, that interested Isabella and of which Edward Lane was a proponent.

“I love research and I delay writing for as long as possible,” she laughs. “A lot of it is not relevant but there are some things you can use in unexpected ways.”

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Although Summerscale says she feels ambivalent about some of Isabella’s behaviour, she is broadly sympathetic towards her. “She was intelligent, intellectually curious, romantic and she had a great sexual appetite. None of these urges could be satisfied so she became desperate, alternating between mania and depression. She would become excited by certain books or ideas and the company of young men – a potent combination which encouraged her to behave recklessly.” Ultimately, Isabella was judged less for her affair with Lane than having written about it. “That kind of shamelessness was evidence in itself of ‘insanity’.”

With her own collusion, in order to save Edward’s reputation and maintain access to her sons, Isabella was condemned as a middle-aged nymphomaniac with an over-active imagination.

The appalling double standards operating in Victorian society meant that Henry Robinson’s ongoing relationship with the mother of his illegitimate children, born before he met Isabella, was not considered worthy of mention in court.

Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace, £16.99, is published by Bloomsbury. Kate Summerscale is appearing at Ilkley Literature Festival tomorrow.

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