A Country Gentleman and His Family

When his father dies, young Theodore Warrender leaves Oxford to take charge of the family estate and its dependents, a role his bookish, ambitious temperament is ill suited to fill. Margaret Oliphant sets his private frustrations against the demands of a mother, sisters, and a rural community that all expect something from him, and she watches how thwarted ambition curdles into pride and quiet unhappiness. As romance and questions of inheritance complicate matters, the novel weighs duty against desire with the shrewd, sympathetic eye Oliphant brought to Victorian domestic life. First published in 1886, it is a keen study of a man measuring himself against a world that will not bend. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.