The Small House at Allington introduces Trollope’s most charming heroine, the bewitching Lily Dale, onto the Barsetshire scene. She so endeared herself to readers of the Cornhill Magazine, where The Small House was first published in serial form, that Trollope was bombarded by letters begging him to marry her to her lifelong adorer Johnny Eames. Lily is the niece of Squire Dale, an embittered old bachelor entrenched in the ‘Great House’ at Allington. His sister-in-law lives at the adjacent ‘Small House’ with her two daughters Lily and Bell, and the action centres on the relations between the two houses and on the romantic entanglements of the two girls. We also meet Sir Raffle Buffle, the bullying head of a government department, the heartless Lady Dumbello, and the shallow Adolphus Crosbie, who gets his just deserts in the form of the frigid Lady Alexandrina de Courcy. Trollope’s characteristic theme of the invasion of a pastoral, conservative world by brash and progressive forces from London gives him an opportunity in this novel for vivid, contrasting descriptions of gracious country living, with croquet and tea on the lawn, and of the cut and thrust of London life in the 1860s. This 1985 Oxford Paperbacks Paperback is in good condition. Owner's Name inside. ISBN: 9780192815521 SKU: 1473731 This image is of the actual book.
