Anthony Trollope

Alice Vavasour has broken off her engagement with John Grey, her faultless fiance, in order to marry her cousin George. According to the Victorian moral code, Alice must pay for her poor behaviour, but the reader forgives her, not because she has been punished and repents, but because we have a complete understanding of - and sympathy with - her motives.

Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her first husband-a reprobate from Louisiana--appears at the school gates, their dreadful secret is revealed and the county is scandalized.

The central theme of the novel is the sexual jealousy of Louis Trevelyn who unjustly accuses his wife Emily of a liason with a friend of her father's. As his suspicion deepens into madness, Trollope gives us a profound psychological study in which Louis' obsessive delirium is comparable to the tormented figure of Othello, tragically flawed by self-deception.

The Way We Live Now is a picture of society that's been corrupted by greed. Set in 1870's London, this story follows Augustus Melmotte, who's a mysterious financier who's received in London, along with his eligible daughter, on the basis of his wealth. Trollope's satirical story castigates the way in which London had let greed and unethical financial principles corrupt nearly every segment of society. 815 pages, softcover.