Doctor Thorne

Historical fiction by Antonius Trollope

Blurb

Son of a bankrupt landowner, Frank Gresham is intent on marrying his beloved Mary Thorne, despite her illegitimacy and apparent poverty. Frank's ambitious mother and haughty aunt are set against the match, however, and push him to save the family's mortgaged estate by making a good marriage to a wealthy heiress. Only Mary's loving uncle, Dr Thorne, knows the secret of her birth and the fortune she is to inherit that will make her socially acceptable in the eyes of Frank's family - but the high-principled doctor believes she should be accepted on her own terms. A telling examination of the relationship between society, money and morality, Dr Thorne (1858) is enduringly popular for Trollope's affectionate depiction of rural English life and his deceptively simple portrayal of human nature.

First Published

1858

Member Reviews Write your own review

walter.kailey

Walter.kailey

It is a mark of Trollope's mastery of his art that he makes it perfectly apparent what is going to happen and how it will end all the way through, and yet I could not put it down. I am frustrated significantly only by one flaw in the novel--by Doctor Thorne's preempting his adult neice's moral prerogatives by keeping her in the dark about whose daughter she is. He is such a deeply moral man, and a humble one, that I find it hard to beliieve he would take this on himself. This is why I give it only a 9.

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