The Small House at Allington — Anthony Trollope

Although The Small House at Allington, the fifth in Trollope's Barsetshire series, is primarily a love story, it mixes requited and unrequited love, disgrace, scandal and near-disgrace with a delightful leavening of wit and social satire in a complicated but lively plot that has delighted generations of readers.

The smooth and ambitious Adolphus Crosbie and the 'hobbledehoy' Johnny Eames both love the Lily Dale, and it is on the manner of their loving that novel revolves. But familiar characters from the earlier Barset novels provide a vigorous counterpoint of the main point, and we are introduced to the vacuous Lady Dumbello, the odious De Courcy family and the dangerous Hartletop faction, as well as meeting that delightful old buffer the Earl de Guest and his prize bull, and for the first time, the egregious Plantagenet Palliser.