Mary Robinson: On Trial in the Public Court

Abstract

Trials for Adultery: or, the History of Divorces. Being Select Trials at Doctors Commons for Adultery, Fornication, Cruelty, Impotence, c even in proper or defensible discourses disinterestedness vies with public interest. As the volume title I have taken for my epigraph reveals despite its disclaimer, the historical fact of legal transcriptions is self-interested: narratively framed as the exposure of private acts for public good, the title titillates even as it screens authorial scandal mongering. …