Rachel Ray

It is through reading novels, wrote Trollope in his Autobiography, 'that girls learn what is expected from them, and what they are to expect when lovers come'. Early on in Rachel Ray Trollope's heroine meets and falls in love with his hero Luke Rowan, a dashing youth ambitious to make his fortune in the Devon brewery trade. Unaccustomed to courtship, innocent of the world and unread in the novel, Rachel hesitates. The course of true love is further impeded by the odious Mr Prong, a local evangelical clergyman, who argues that no commitment can possibly be given until the gentleman's financial position is secured. George Eliot praised Trollope's subtlety of art in constructing a novel 'natty and complete as a nut on its stem'. In Rachel Ray Trollope combines nimble comedy with an engaging portrayal of the tender fluctuations of mood, agitation, happiness, dismay, of a young girl in love. Introducing this edition John Sutherland discusses the genesis of Rachel Ray and the 'magazine wars' that preceded its appearance in 1863.