Evan Harrington's father was the finest tailor in England, and his sisters have married a Portuguese count, a brewer and an army major respectively — all of whom must never find out. Evan is expected to deny the shop, and cannot quite. Meredith's own father and grandfather were tailors in Portsmouth, a fact he concealed all his life; this 1861 novel is the closest he came to writing it down, and the shame in it is his own.
