The spectacle of intimacy: a public life for the Victorian family

Introduction: the trouble with families

The trials of Caroline Norton: poetry, publicity, and the prime minister

The young queen and the parliamentary bedchamber: "I never saw a man so frightened"

Sarah Stickney ellis: the ardent woman and the abject wife

Tom's pinch: the sexual serpent beside the Dickensian fireside

Love after death: the deceased wife's sister bill

The transvestite, the bloomer, and the nightingale

On the parapets of privacy: walls of wealth and dispossession

Robert Kerr: The Gentleman's House and the one-room solution

The empire of divorce: single women, the bill of 1857, and revolt in India

Bigamy and modernity: the case of Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Epilogue: between manual and spectacle.