The Rector and the Doctor’s Family

Two linked stories open Margaret Oliphant’s Chronicles of Carlingford and introduce the town that would carry her finest fiction. In the first, a shy Oxford scholar named Mr Proctor takes up the rectorship of Carlingford and discovers, at a dying woman’s bedside, how unfit his bookish life has left him for the real work of a parish. The second and longer tale follows Dr Edward Rider, a young physician burdened by his drunken elder brother, whose abandoned wife and children arrive on the scene along with the brisk, self-sacrificing Nettie, who takes their whole disorder in hand. Together the pieces sketch a world of quiet duty and thwarted feeling. This free PDF and EPUB edition gathers both early Carlingford works in one volume.