Phoebe, Junior

Raised in London and sharper than the relatives she goes to stay with, Phoebe Tozer returns to Carlingford as the confident granddaughter of a retired grocer and chapel deacon. There she moves through the town’s tangle of chapel politics, social snobbery, and marriage prospects with a poise that unsettles her elders and charms nearly everyone else. Margaret Oliphant closes her Chronicles of Carlingford with a heroine who turns modest origins into real advantage, exposing the small hypocrisies of respectable society along the way. Published in 1876, it is a good-humored, clear-eyed study of ambition and class from one of the Victorian era’s most productive novelists. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.