The Duke's Daughter by Mrs. Oliphant

In the polished world of one of England's proudest houses, Mrs. Oliphant's The Duke's Daughter and The Fugitives reveals how little grandeur can protect a family from private anguish. Beneath the surface of rank and respectability, the Duchess emerges as a sensible woman whose life has been shaped by compromise, while Lady Jane's restless imagination keeps asking what a woman might have been if marriage and duty had never narrowed her choices. As Jane's feelings deepen, the novel turns from quiet reflection to open crisis. Winton's proposal is met with the Duke's furious outrage, and he is violently ejected as an intolerable affront to his daughter's station, leaving him stunned and humiliated. In the Duchess's sitting-room, however, composure and feeling meet: the Duchess presses Jane to choose for herself, and Jane, with moral courage, admits her love and resolves to confront her father directly. Elegant, ironic, and emotionally acute, the story traces the clash between duty and desire, appearance and reality, in a compelling Victorian drama of family, marriage, and self-determination. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.