The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Summerscale turns to divorce scandal

08.10.08 Benedicte Page

Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury has acquired a new book from Kate Summerscale, author of the Samuel Johnson prize-winner The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.

Pringle bought The Lust of Mrs Robinson from David Miller at Rogers, Coleridge and White and will publish it late in 2010 or early 2011.

The book will tell the story of a Victorian scandal in which Henry Robinson sued his wife for divorce, after reading an account of a passionate affair with a mutual friend in her private journals. "He tried to divorce her for adultery but Mrs Robinson had two physicians who testified that what she wrote in her diary was fantasy, so she won and the divorce was not granted," said Pringle. "It's a page-turning book, an exciting story and a courtroom tale, which follows Mrs Robinson's life story and also gives a window onto Victorian society."

The new book will be published by Walker & Co in the US and by Bloomsbury in Germany. Pringle said that sales for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher had now passed 100,000.

Benedicte Page Kate Summerscale News Bloosmbury

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