The Revd Mark Robarts puts his future and his family in peril when he guarantees the debts of an unscrupulous MP. The romantic hopes of Mark's sister Lucy are also dependent on the goodwill of Mark's offended patroness, mother of Lucy's suitor. Trollope's fourth Barchester novel, Framley Parsonage remains one of his most popular stories.

'The fact is, Mark, that you and I cannot conceive the depth of fraud in such a man as that.'

The Reverend Mark Robarts makes a mistake. Drawn into a social set at odds with his clerical responsibilities, he guarantees the debts of an unscrupulous Member of Parliament. He stands to lose his reputation, and his family, future, and home are all in peril. His patroness, the proud and demanding Lady Lufton, is offended and the romantic hopes of Mark's sister Lucy, courted by Lady Lufton's son, are in jeopardy. Pride and ambition are set against love and integrity in a novel that has remained one of Trollope's most popular stories.

Set against ecclesiastical events in the Barchester diocese and informed by British political instability after the Crimean War, Trollope's fourth Barchester novel was his first major success. A compelling history of uncertain futures, Framley Parsonage is a vivid exploration of emotional and geographical displacement that grew out of Trollope's own experiences as he returned to England from Ireland in 1859.

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Convincingly argues that its narrative of "precarious livings and tenancy" displaces to Barsetshire topical concerns about land ownership and occupation in Ireland.

Autorentext
Katherine Mullin is the editor, with Francis O'Gorman, of Trollope's The Duke's Children (OUP, 2011). She is the author of James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity (CUP, 2003), and has published articles on late-Victorian and Modernist fiction. Her most recent book is Working Girls: Fiction, Sexuality and the Modern (forthcoming 2014). Francis O'Gorman has edited Trollope's The Duke's Children (with Katherine Mullin), Ruskin's Praeterita, and Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers for Oxford World's Classics. He has written widely on English literature, chiefly from 1780 to the present, and is currently editing Swinburne for OUP.