octogamy

The best wardmaster in Scutari had eight wives—I mean eight wives alive—at different stations. […] He was tried when he came home at Warwick Assizes for what was euphoniously called bigamy, but was octogamy.

The author devotes almost an entire page of the essay to rewriting [Mary Elizabeth] Braddon's fiction, replacing bigamy with octogamy and inventing a sensation author who, writing between meals, creates three murderous polygamist heroines in one day--including one who, having poisoned twenty-seven lovers, flies off "to sunny Italy ... with the stable boy."