The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

Before daylight on a bitter March morning, Roger Acton rises for another day of poorly paid labour. The rural novel The Crock of Gold opens with his growing discontent, setting faith and generosity against poverty, unfair wages and the appeal of money. Tupper describes both the strain of providing for a family and the habits of kindness that have shaped Roger's character.

This collection brings together Martin Farquhar Tupper's fiction, essays and religious arguments. In another passage, John Dillaway prepares for Maria's wedding to Henry Clements while deceiving her father about the arrangements. Lady Dillaway supports the match, and Sir Thomas becomes absorbed in hopes of a wealthy family alliance. Household schemes and rural hardship give readers two different settings for Tupper's judgments on conduct. The prose offers a view of nineteenth-century British moral writing through its attention to generosity, social ambition and calculated deception.