Anne Armstrong shares a squalid room in Dublin with her sister. Then a hasty marriage to John Watson, a former cleric and newly appointed teacher, transports her to a life of almost equal hardship and frustration in South London. There she receives no attention, no love, for Watson dedicates it all to his books.
At last her only pleasure is to provoke her husband – until he puts a stop to her defiance with a gun.
Watson's Apology reconstructs the events leading up to the Stockwell Tragedy, giving a compelling indictment of Victorian marriage.