Marcella Boyce, a Pre-Raphaelite beauty of the 1880s, is passionately in love with the ideals of socialism. A 21-year-old art student, she lives in a Kensington boarding house until her father inherits the family estate, Mellor Park, in the Midlands. Leaving her studies, her philanthropic work in the East End, and the company of her Bohemian friends, she embarks on her new life at Mellor Park, determined to alleviate the poverty she sees around her. Then Aldous Raeburn, Tory candidate and heir to Lord Maxwell's estate, falls in love with Marcella. But Marcella is torn between her longing to become mistress of Maxwell Court and her burning idealism. Before she can reconcile the two, Marcella must learn -- through bitter experience -- the real barriers that divide one human from another.

"First published in 1888, Robert Elsmere was probably the biggest-selling novel of the nineteenth century. Inspired by the religious crises of her father, Ward tells the story of an Oxford clergyman who begins to doubt the doctrines of the Anglican church after he encounters the work of German rationalists. Rather than becoming an atheist, Elsmere pursues the idea of "constructive liberalism," stressing the importance of social work among the poor and uneducated. The Times called it "a clever attack upon revealed religion", and William Gladstone's copy was annotated with objections to Ward's heterodoxy. In the Victorian age, nothing was more likely to generate publicity than religious controversy, and Robert Elsmere became a runaway success."--Amazon.