The Small House at Allington

About the book

Lily and Bell Dale live with their mother in the smaller house on the Allington estate, where family arrangements carry expectations about marriage and dependence. Lily's attachment to Adolphus Crosbie draws her towards a man whose attraction to her competes with his interest in social advancement. Johnny Eames, meanwhile, must negotiate his own feelings and the awkward experiences of a young clerk learning to act with confidence. Trollope moves between country households and London settings, making the judgments of relatives, employers, and fashionable acquaintances part of each apparently private choice. The novel's patient attention to conversation reveals how people explain conduct to themselves before defending it to others. Its emotional tensions concern not only whom a person loves, but what obligations they believe that love creates.

• Love and ambition
• Family obligation
• Self-justification

Why read it

For a patient examination of courtship in which social aspiration and personal loyalty exert different kinds of pressure on the same decision.

Novel · English text