As I’ve come to expect from Kate Summerscale (author of the acclaimed The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher), Mrs. Roginson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, is an engaging work of nonfiction that delves into the most private moments of family life. Summerscale investigates the 1850s divorce case brought by Henry Robinson, a middle-class businessman, against his wife Isabella in the earliest years of the newly constituted Divorce Court in London. At that time, “[m]arriage was the subject of much contemporary debate.” The only piece of evidence in the divorce case is Isabella’s diary, which records her side of a love affair with a family friend. As an intelligent woman trapped in a repressive marriage, Isabella used her diary “to understand her alienated, conflicting self from the outside in, to get inside her own head and under her own skin.” During the trial, every private word in Isabella’s diary is dissected and analyzed. I won’t reveal the ultimate verdict, but the reader is struck by the power of Isabella’s words along with the suffocating effect of her society. Summerscale’s informed account of this historical episode draws extensively form the court record as well as the context of the times without becoming overly pedantic. Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace is as much an enlightening analysis of Victorian views of marriage and sex as it is an account of a particular case of probable adultery. Recommended for those readers who enjoy narrative nonfiction.