'She liked lies...To lie readily and cleverly,
recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the
lessons which she had learned, a necessity in a woman'
Lizzie Eustace is young, beautiful, and widowed. Her
determination to hold on to the Eustace family's diamond
necklace in the face of legal harassment by her
brother-in-law's solicitor entangles her in a series of
crimes - apparent and real - and contrived love-affairs.
Her cousin Frank, Tory MP and struggling barrister,
loyally assists her, to the distress of his fiancee,
Lucy Morris. A pompous Under-Secretary of State, an
exploitative and acquisitive American and her unhappy
niece, a shady radical peer, and a brutal aristocrat are
only some of the characters in this, one of Trollope's
most engaging novels: part sensation fiction, part
detective story, part political satire, and part ironic
romance. The Eustace Diamonds (1873) belongs to
Trollope's Palliser series. Though often considered the
least political of the six novels, it is a highly
revealing study of Victorian Britain, its colonial
activities in Ireland and India, its veneration of
wealth, and its pervasive dishonesty.ABOUT THE SERIES:
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