Lady Anna

Lady Anna is a novel by Anthony Trollope, written in 1871 and first published in book form in 1874.

The protagonist is a young woman of noble birth who, through an extraordinary set of circumstances, has fallen in love with and become engaged to a tailor. The novel describes her attempts to resolve the conflict between her duty to her social class and her duty to the man she loves.

The title character is the daughter of the late Earl Lovel. Her mother married him out of ambition rather than love, and despite his evil reputation. Soon after their marriage, he told her that he had a living wife, which made their union invalid and their unborn daughter illegitimate. He then sailed to Italy without her and did not return to England for twenty years.

During those two decades, Lady Lovel struggled to prove the validity of her marriage, and consequently her right to her title and her daughter's legitimacy. She enjoyed neither the sympathy of the public nor the support of her family during this time; her only friend and supporter was Thomas Thwaite, a Radical tailor of Keswick, who gave her and her daughter shelter and financed her legal battles.