My favorite books about the intricacies and perils of divorce in Regency-era Britain

Henry Paget, first Marquess of Anglesey, was a quintessential nobleman of his time. One of my very favorites reads, this biography by his descendent, the seventh Marquess, draws on letters and family lore to tell his story in detail: his grand tour, his military and diplomatic service, and best of all, his scandalous adultery, divorce, and remarriage. At about forty years of age, he fell deeply in love with Wellington’s sister-in-law. Her husband divorced her in England, and then the parties traveled to Scotland so that Paget’s wife could divorce him there. The story includes all the drama of divorce in the era: the action for “criminal conversation,” the ecclesiastical divorce, and a necessary duel to preserve the honor of the adulteress’s family name. 

This book provides a helpful overview of the marriage and divorce laws of England during the period in question, as well as twelve “case studies,” all useful for research. Most of the marital breakups covered in this volume occurred before the Regency era, a few even before the greater Georgian era. Each story takes a reader through the heartache and drama of these unhappy marriages and the legal machinations needed to end them. 

An early novella of mine has the indignant heroine rushing to save a woman from a wife sale at a seedy inn. The enormous cost of legally ending a marriage in the Regency put divorce out of the reach of all but the very wealthy. For the poor, and perhaps the drunks, like Thomas Hardy’s hero in The Mayor of Casterbridge, there was another option for ending a marriage, one with a long though not very respectable tradition. Yes, some Englishmen sold their wives! This book covers the peculiarities of this poor man’s method of ending an unhappy marriage. 

Divorce is good fodder for drama and can be employed in different ways in fiction. In this second-chance Regency romance, the reunited lovers are divorced. Convinced by his duplicitous mother of his wife’s infidelity, the hero, a duke divorced his wife and left her penniless. The heroine’s only income is an allowance from her brother, which he ends in a fit of pique when her scandal impacts his marital prospects. (Divorce in this era might shame the entire family). Forced to earn a living, the heroine takes employment as a cook at an inn, where her former husband encounters her and is shocked at how far she has fallen. Read this book to see how the perils of divorce—and remarriage—are dramatized by a skilled romance writer. 

Yes, that says “bedding” and not “wedding”! In this Regency Romance novel, the heroine is a scandalous divorcee who’s sworn off romance. She has some income of her own and isn’t penniless. Dipping a toe into society again, she’s wooed by a determined young rake who wants only to bed her. But when he falls in love and proposes, she has to say no. [Spoiler alert] Her abusive former husband paid a man to perjure her as an adulteress so he could divorce her. The story shows the vindictiveness a spurned husband might employ in this era: the divorce decree leaves her forbidden to remarry. Read this book for a different take on the perils of divorce by another skilled romance writer.