First published 2012
Augustus Melmotte arrives in London, a mysterious financier promising impossible wealth. His daughter Marie becomes the season's most sought-after marriage prospect, attracting fortune hunters and ambitious aristocrats desperate to restore their fading estates. As Melmotte's speculative railway scheme promises astronomical returns, London's elite scramble to invest, knowing everything could collapse with one false move. Some see through his charade; others willingly blind themselves to potential ruin. Beneath the glittering social surface, reputations will be made and destroyed, fortunes will rise and vanish, and the very structures of Victorian society will be tested by raw ambition.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: class-conflict, social-commentary
Setting: England
Period: 19th-Century
776 pages · Paperback · WORDSWORTH