Book description
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.
