Phoebe, Junior

The last of the 'Chronicles of Carlingford', a series of closely-observed and comic narratives of domestic and clerical life, Phoebe, Junior is the story of Phoebe Beecham, the daughter of a Dissenting minister, who arrives in Carlingford to nurse her invalid grandmother. Reginald May, the principled son of an Anglican clergyman, and Clarence Copperhead, the dull son of a self-made millionaire engineer, both fall in love with her, despite the fact that her grandfather is a tradesman. Another Dissenting minister, Horace Northcote, also arrives in Carlingford and falls in love with Reginald's sister, Ursula, whose father forges the signature of Phoebe's grandfather in order to secure a loan, with dire consequences. Phoebe herself is a strong-willed, independent girl who transcends her spoiled and avaricious upbringing to choose her own path through life and must now choose between May and Copperhead. First published in 1876, Phoebe, Junior address the social, political and theological conflicts that defined mid-Victorian England and is full of complex, multi-dimensional characters who bring this world vividly to life.