On a winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party in Edinburgh's New Town. The rich widow Lady Drysdale was a vivacious hostess, the centre of an energetic intellectual scene. In the high, airy drawing rooms Isabella was at once enchanted by Lady Drysdale's handsome son-in-law, Edward Lane. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. In a compelling story of romance, fidelity, fantasy and the bounds of privacy, 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.