Doctor Thorne: A Fiction and Literature Classic By Anthony Trollope! AAA+++

In this, the third novel in Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, the author leaves the clerical world to explore the interplay of love, class status and money in 19th Century England. The titular character is an upright country doctor who has raised his dead brother's daughter as his own, and hidden from her the sordid truth of her illegitimate birth. This girl, Mary Thorne, is beautiful and virtuous, but penniless and of worse than humble birth.

The novel is driven by Mary's love for young Frank Gresham, the young squire of Greshamsbury. His father is the first commoner of West Barsetshire and connected by marriage to the local aristocracy, the de Courcys. The squire having encumbered Greshamsbury in debt, the family's only hope is that Frank marry money; however, he is adamant he will wed only his love, Mary Thorne.