The Vicar of Bullhampton

Here is another of Trollope's splendid galleries of characters: Harry Gilmore, the Squire, Captain Walter Marrable, the Reverend Frank Fenwick and Mrs. Fenwick, who is as good a specimen of an English country parson's wife as you shall meet in any county - good-looking, fond of the society around her, with a little dash of fun, knowing in blankets and corduroys and coals and tea - knowing also in beer and gin and tobacco. Between them, the Vicar of Bullhampton and his wife are acquainted with every man and woman in the parish, including the Balfours, Mary Lowther and the Brattles - the Brattles who live across the meadows at the old mill and who are to figure so prominently in this story, set in a quiet Wiltshire backwater.