Can it be right to persist in a bigamous marriage? Mr Peacocke, a classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her first husband - a reprobate from Louisiana - appears at the school gates, their dreadful secret is revealed and the county is scandalised.
With its scathing depiction of American manhood, it's jousting with convention, and its amiable, egotistical protagonist, Dr Wortle's School is one of the sharpest and most engaging of Trollope's later novels.