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.