In 1858, Rosina Bulwer Lytton was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum by her husband, the eminent Victorian politician and novelist, Edward Bulwer Lytton. After the disintegration of their marriage, Rosina wrote letters to prominent figures in which she revealed details about Edward's mistresses and illegitimate children.

In 1858, Rosina Bulwer Lytton was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum by her husband, the eminent Victorian politician and novelist, Edward Bulwer Lytton. After the disintegration of their marriage, Rosina wrote letters to prominent figures in which she revealed details about Edward's mistresses and illegitimate children.

In 1858, Rosina Bulwer Lytton was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum by her husband, the eminent Victorian politician and novelist, Edward Bulwer Lytton. After the disintegration of their marriage, Rosina wrote letters to prominent figures in which she revealed details about Edward's mistresses and illegitimate children.

In history -- May 1858 -- June 1858, part I -- June 1858, part II -- July 1858 -- July-August 1858 -- The aftermath of the hot summer -- Epilogue

This highly original book brilliantly exposes the phenomenon of false allegations of lunacy and the dark motives behind them in the Victorian period. Gaslight tales of rooftop escapes, men and women snatched in broad daylight, patients shut in coffins, a fanatical cult known as the Abode of Love... The nineteenth century saw repeated panics about sane individuals being locked away in lunatic asylums. With the rise of the ‘mad-doctor’ profession, English liberty seemed to be threatened by a new generation of medical men willing to incarcerate difficult family members in return for the high fees paid by an unscrupulous spouse or friend. Sarah Wise uncovers twelve shocking stories, untold for over a century and reveals the darker side of the Victorian upper and middle classes – their sexuality, fears of inherited madness, financial greed and fraudulence – and chillingly evoke the black motives at the heart of the phenomenon of the ‘inconvenient person.' ‘A fine social history of the people who contested their confinement to madhouses in the 19th century, Wise offers striking arguments, suggesting that the public and juries were more intent on liberty than doctors and families’ Sunday Telegraph

The collection is in honor of Mary Waldron, a founder member of the Women's Studies Group, whose distinguished scholarship is exemplified in the first chapter, and whose generous encouragement of other specialists in feminist studies in the long eighteenth century.

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 3 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.