The Ladies Lindores

When Lord Lindores unexpectedly inherits an earldom, his new rank feeds an appetite for advancement that reaches into his daughters’ lives. Margaret Oliphant follows the Lindores family across the Scottish countryside, tracing how the father’s social climbing binds one daughter to a coarse, brutish husband and shadows the marriage prospects of the other. Against the estates and drawing rooms of the Highlands, the novel weighs love against money and duty against desire, asking what freedom a woman of the period can really claim. Oliphant writes with her usual clear eye for the pressures families place on their own, and with real sympathy for the young caught between them. This free PDF and EPUB edition makes the three-volume novel easy to read today.