A Blighted Life (Perfect Library)

First published in 1880, A Blighted Life: A True Story is a stark Victorian-era memoir in which Rosina Bulwer Lytton recounts her experience of being confined in an asylum and her subsequent release—presented as a personal testimony and a wider indictment of the legal and social power structures surrounding women in 19th-century Britain.

Written with urgency and polemical force, the book blends autobiography, social critique, and historical detail, offering readers a firsthand window into the era’s attitudes toward marriage, reputation, and mental health. (Reader note: the subject matter includes confinement and psychological distress, discussed in a historical context.)