Table of Contents

In many ways Doctor Thorne is Trollope's ideal character - human, reticent, stern and honourable. He has the strength to stand up to the destructive prejudices and fears of mid-Victorian society but at the same time does not abandon its traditional values.

Doctor Thorne is about the problem of an unsuitable marriage. Shall young Frank Gresham, heir to a great impoverished estate, marry the penniless Mary Thorne? Shall Doctor Thorne, her uncle, disclose that she may herself become heiress to a huge fortune? In the anxieties of honest people who behave without heroics; in the gentle satire with which great persons are described; and in the pleasant humour which pervades the book, Trollope reveals the subtlety which is so characteristic of his novels.