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.