Four generations of a clerical family from the Napoleonic wars to the 1880s, told by a godfather who watches a father break a son by degrees and calls it duty. Butler wrote it over ten years, kept it in a drawer, and left instructions that it be published after his death — which is why it appeared in 1903 and shook a generation that thought the Victorian family settled. Shaw called it one of the summits of human achievement; the money that saves Ernest is left by an aunt, not earned. Thirty-nine plates after painters including David Wilkie and William Powell Frith trace the public ceremonies, market days, and family gatherings of the century the novel dissects.
