The Duke´s Children (Oxford World´s Classics New Edition)

• The Duke's Children is a touching story of love, family relationships. loyalty, principles, horse-racing, flirtation, and debt, as the old Duke struggles to come to terms with the loss of his wife and the stubbornness of his children. The concluding novel in the Palliser series, it stands alone as well as being the perfect culmination to Trollope's superb sequence.
• The wide-ranging introduction explores the implicit politics of the novel about the nature of conservatism and liberalism in all their facets; the 'woman question'; autobiographical echoes; gambling; and the novel's interest in modernity and the United States.
• Invaluable appendix outlines the political context of the Palliser novels and establishes the internal chronology of the series and the relationship between fictional and actual political events, providing a unique understanding of the series as a linked narrative.
• Biographical Preface provides a compact biography of Anthony Trollope, and a Chronology charts his life against the major historical events of the period.
• Explanatory Notes detail the attentiveness of the novel to its own age, and pay attention to the original serial version and the longer manuscript version.

New to this edition

• Introduction, select bibliography, and explanatory notes by Katherine Mullin and Francis O'Gorman.
• Biographical Preface outlining Trollope's life, and new Chronology.
• Appendix outlining the political context of the Palliser novels and establishing the internal chronology of the series and the relationship between fictional and actual political events, providing a unique understanding of the series as a linked narrative.
• Improved print appearance with an entirely reset text.

'I do not know that one ought to be surprised at anything.'

The Duke of Omnium is overwhelmed by the death of his vivacious wife, Lady Glencora. Once the British Prime Minister, he is now in sole charge of his three wilful children. Lord Gerald has been sent down from University; Lord Silverbridge has defected from the Liberal cause of his father's party to the Conservative, and is badly in debt; Lady Mary has fallen in love with Frank Tregear, a commoner with a will of iron but no money. The Duke, troubled and without easy relationships with any of his children, tries to impose his own will. But the result seems to move the novel towards calamity.

Searching the great topics of compromise and principle, of obedience and dissent, of personal integrity and the conflicts between generations, The Duke's Children is a domestic story with far-reaching political issues at stake. It is a fitting end to the Palliser series, one of the most remarkable achievements of British fiction.

Readership: General readers of classic literature, especially Victorian fiction and the novels of Anthony Trollope; readers of the Pallilser series; students of Victorian fiction, cultural studies, the 'woman question''.