Can You Forgive Her?

Alice Vavasor should be married to the sensible, kindly John Grey, but despite what her respectable relations might think, Alice cannot quite reconcile herself to this fate. Once upon a time she was engaged to her wild cousin George, and now he stands in need of her money and, perhaps too, her good influence. Meanwhile Alice's friend Lady Glencora has married the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser, but is still pursued by Burgo Fitzgerald, the handsome rascal she loves. In this hugely compelling novel, Trollope shows the two women struggling to reconcile heart, mind, and moral code while enduring the stifling scrutiny of their contemporaries.

Anthony Trollope (1815?1882) established a successful career in the post office while also writing more than 40 novels, as well as short stories. He enjoyed considerable acclaim during his lifetime and is best remembered for the Barsetshire Chronicles. His admirers include Lady Antonia Fraser, Jonathan Raban, Ruth Rendell, and Gore Vidal as well as Tolstoy, Henry James, Browning, and George Eliot, who said that his talent for assembling seemingly unremarkable incidents into an absorbing plot was "among the subtleties of art which can hardly be appreciated except by those who have striven after the same result with conscious failure." D. J. Taylor is the Whitbread Award-winning author of such titles as Bright Young Things, Kept, and Orwell: The Life.