Isabella Hamilton Robinson

27 February 1813 - 23 September 1887

IHR 's diary acquired notoriety after it was found to contain details of her relationship with a younger, married doctor and after it was made public in the Divorce Court (at a moment when divorce law was undergoing reform). The court case turned on the question whether these details were cold fact, imaginative exaggeration, or pure invention. The diary was later destroyed. IHR wrote and even published a few other texts, poetry and perhaps essays, but these remain obscure, while the diary is the focus of Kate Summerscale 's Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace, 2012.

Milestones

27 February 1813

Isabella Hamilton Walker (who later wrote as IHR ) was born in Bloomsbury, London.

Summerscale, Kate. Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace. Bloomsbury USA.

From 1849 to 1855

In her personal diary during these years, IHR recorded her feelings about her frustrating home life and her uninspired marriage, but more especially her romantic longings, and her friendship, infatuation, and affair with Edward Lane , a younger, married doctor.

Swabey, M.C. Merttins, and Thomas Hutchinson Tristram. Reports of Cases Decided in the Court of Probate and in the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, Butterworths.

363

A Handy Book on the New Law of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. Davis & Son.

45-47

23 September 1887

Three days after discovering an infected abscess on one of her thumbs, IHR died from septicaemia. She was seventy years old, and forty years had gone by since her scandalous divorce.

Summerscale, Kate. Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace. Bloomsbury USA.

222

Biography

Birth and Family

27 February 1813

Isabella Hamilton Walker (who later wrote as IHR ) was born in Bloomsbury, London.

Summerscale, Kate. Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace. Bloomsbury USA.