Framley Parsonage

Description

Trollope's story of political advancement, debt, and family pride Mark Robarts is a clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley. In a naive attempt to mix in influential circles, he agrees to guarantee a bill for a large sum of money for the disreputable local Member of Parliament, while being helped in his career in the Church by the same hand. But the unscrupulous politician reneges on his financial obligations, and Mark must face the consequences this debt may bring to his family. One of Trollope's most enduringly popular novels since it appeared in 1860, Framley Parsonage is an evocative depiction of country life in nineteenth-century England, told with great compassion and acute insight into human nature.

Anthony Trollope was born in London in 1815 and died in 1882. His father was a barrister who went bankrupt and his family was maintained by his mother, Frances, who was a well-known writer. Establishing himself with a career in the Post Office, Trollope's first novel was published in 1847. he went on to write over forty novels and enjoyed considerable acclaim during his lifetime. He is best known for The Barchester Chronicles and the brilliant Palliser novels. David Skilton is Professor of English at Cardiff University. His books included Anthony Trollope and His Contemporaries and The Early and Mid-Victorian Novel. He has also edited Wilkie Collins's The Law and the Lady, Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbevilles and Trollope's The Prime Minister for the Penguin Classics. Peter Miles lectures at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is author of "Wuthering Heights": The Critics Debate and co-author of Cinema, Literature and Society: Elite and Mass Culture in Interwar Britain.